A TECHNIQUE DRIVEN Blog dedicated to mastery of surface design techniques. First we dye, overdye, paint, stitch, resist, tie, fold, silk screen, stamp, thermofax, batik, bejewel, stretch, shrink, sprinkle, Smooch, fuse, slice, dice, AND then we set it on fire using a variety of heat tools.

Monday, March 14, 2011





Hi All,

Finally got around to doing some ink on silk. This is Tsukineko ink on charmeuse silk. First I traced a pattern on the silk using water soluble blue marker. Then I used Sennelier Aqua gutta in an air pen to outline the design. (I have not mastered the air pen yet. There are so many tips. Also I think I made the gutta a little too thin making it run out too fast and resulted in a fat resist line). I will be working to get everything right. As I was painting the blue background, I added coarse salt. You have to be quick as the ink has to be wet to react with the salt.

Below is a closeup of the salt reaction.



April is my turn to do the technique blog. I am going to do Parfait Dyeing. I will be putting the technique on soon. The rest of the year is going to be crazy but I will try to keep up.

Mid-April, my daughter is going to go with her best friend to the Ukraine where her friend has adopted two little special needs children. I will be in Virginia taking care of my daughter's four children. I have fine arts and craft shows lined up for every month starting in July until and including December. I will be teaching Parfait Dyeing and Batiking at an art festival in Maine in August (Schoodic Art Festival) . You can google the name of it for more info. To top that all off and the most exciting, if every thing goes well, I will be Grammy again in the Fall to two Serbian children my daughter and her family is adopting.

So as you call tell, I will be mostly crazy for the rest of the year. Hope you try the Parfait Dyeing. I love it and find that a lot of them make great background fabric for my art quilts.

Rosalita


5 comments:

  1. Rosalita,
    I know that you have done similar work with fabric paints. Can you talk a bit about using ink rather than paint in this project? Did you like it better/worse? Easier/harder? Colors wise was there a difference? Some thoughts please.

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  2. I am a great fan of painting on silk. Setasilk and the Tsukineko ink act about the same. With silk, filling in the design is as simple as a touch with a brush with ink on it. Silk naturally wicks the ink to the resist. Blending is easy with silk. Again just a touch. Fabric paints on cotton are rather labor intensive. Wicking is minimal. Colorwise, ink can be very dramatic or when thinned with water it can be very soft and muted. I guess you could say that about paints too. The only downside to using silk is that it is not as easy to finish the project as far as quilting, binding and hanging. I would appreciate any knowledge out there on the subject.

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  3. I would imagine that free-motion quilting on silk might be difficult. Would it be feasible to fuse a very lightweight wonder-under type of product to the silk before doing any piecing and/or quilting to give it some substance? Or is the temp that you need to fuse too high to use with silk?

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  4. I have one in process that I just put on warm and natural batting and a backing. I used monifilament thread to do some outlining with. That seemed to work okay but in some places it split the silk. I am finishing it by hand. I am not really sure how it will hang if I bind it and put a hanging sleeve on it. I am going to try a little piece the way you suggest. Silk can take quite a high heat.

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  5. I would not use warm and natural with the silk. It just does not have enough body of it's own. It fact, when I tried that once it was such a nightmare that I have hidden the piece away for the time being. I have used felt or pellon for the stability in silk pieces and been happy with the result. I did not do a regular double-fold binding on my silk pieces. One I put on stretcher bars. Another one I put a ribbon binding on it.

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