More Retreat stuff

We made silk paper without using textile medium. This is one of my pieces.

I included some narrow silk braid and bits of a sheet of ironed Angelina fibres. It has been sprayed lightly with Starburst spray in a couple of colours. I quite like it, but I think I may spray it again for deeper colour.


Here is the little knotted string bag I demonstrated. The actual one I made on the weekend has disappeared - I made this one some time ago and rust dyed it.

You may remember this bowl. It is piping cord wrapped with a multicoloured batik fabric then coiled and machine stitched. It was my sample piece for this workshop.

Below is the one I made as I demonstrated the technique on Sunday. The cord is thicker and the fabric is the sundyed piece I used as a background to some stitching which I hated so much I unpicked it. It looks much nicer in the bowl.

Today I decided to make another bowl from the string I had made from some silk tweed that I bought for a song years ago because it had faded in spots. I decided to add in some yarns as well. I haven't got very far as yet, but it's looking OK.

Silk Paper

Today at Contemporary Quilt Group Lois demonstrated using silk fibres to make silk 'paper' aka known as silk fusion or silk felt. While I have done this technique before, other members had not, and I happily took along some of the bits I had in my cupboard.


This is the piece I made. The stringy bits are not properly bonded and I am sure it will look a lot better for some stitching, but I am pretty pleased with this. It was a half hour's effort and took only 20 minutes or so to dry, thanks to another fine hot day. Yes, the weather is lovely, but oh, I am longing for some rain.

Ugh, computers - day 3

The problem I had loading the update wasn't entirely my fault, hooray! The sequence in which we were told the files were to be loaded was wrong, and when David realised this we had no problems. I have spent the afternoon printing updated sample guides - this update has made all the stitches from both the Pfaff Creative Vision and the Diamond Designer available as motif fills. I doubt I will ever use more than a handful.

I also did some playing with the silk paper and knitting. This time I used some cotton knit that I bought in a roll from an auto supplies place (sold as cleaning cloth) some years ago. I have previously dyed some and used it with the embellisher. I coloured it with some of the Opulence inks that Dale sells, plus a few dabs of Jo Sonya Rose Gold (which looks much better in real life than it does in the scan).



I have realised that I did not sufficiently shake the Moonshadow Mists the other day and that was why there was no colour, only the brown. Today I used some more of the Opulence inks on top and it is much better. Again, even better in real life than in the scan.

Ugh, computers

I didn't have a chance to play with silk today. I have spent hours wrestling with a computer.

I need to update my 4D Embroidery software, but I can't do it because there is not enough room on the laptop. So I thought I would defrag the hard drive. Can't do that either; there is not enough space. Needs 15% and it's only got 1% left. I can't understand where all the disk space has gone - I don't have many photos saved there. So now I am going to transfer all my photo files to CD and also back up all the embroidery designs, then restore the system. I hope it works! I have never done this on a PC. Macs are so easy to deal with in comparison.

I can upload photos today, so here are my silk bits. This is the one I made in the Sarah Lawrence class, using her paints and silk knitting she supplied.


Here is the piece I made yesterday. The Moonshadow Mists have not worked - I have no colour except the walnut ink. Maybe I can add some paint or dye, or just leave it.

Another Take on Silk Paper

I went to Sarah Lawrence's hands-on workshop "Knitting with Natural Materials - no knitting involved" yesterday afternoon. I mean, who could resist that title?

We used silk cocoon strippings, industrial weight baking paper (from England - is there something similar available here from restaurant supply stores? Sarah says GladBake is too flimsy), spray colours from Sarah's supply (though Moonshadow Mists were also available) and a piece of a circular tube knitted with silk thread (the knitting bit).

Blogger won't let me upload any images at the moment though.

The process relies on the silk containing a large amount of sericin which can be activated by moisture and heat so that the fibres meld together. The knitting has to be in natural fibres - silk preferably, but cotton and bamboo also possible. Wool is apparently a no-no.

I made another sample this afternoon, using a hastily knitted-with-bamboo-yarn piece and Moonshadow Mist sprays. I probably also dampened it down too much, because it still isn't dry enough to scan. I may try another tomorrow with some cotton knit I already have.