Sunday, December 6, 2009

Silk scarves
















I hand-dyed a bunch of silk scarves for donation to the Brockville Women's Network, an organization I used to belong to. Every year, they hold a Christmas auction to raise money for scholarships that they give out to women who are going back to school. It is a wonderful organization and I do miss it.

Anyway, after taking the class at Wild Heather, I decided to try my hand with it at home. I got a bunch of blanks, some Dy-Na-Flow paints, some brushes, silk salt, and off I went!

I didn't do any of the Shibori style, but I did vary the techniques I learned a bit; some of the painting was done on damp scarves, some on dry, some I used salt on and some I didn't, some are vivid and some are more sheer. In the interest of helping them dry a bit faster, I dried some of them with a hair dryer while they were pinned to the plastic on my table and when they floated back down, they picked up some beads of paint, which was pretty cool, if unexpected. I also found spraying water on the paint made an interesting pattern.

As a trial, I also added fringes to a couple, using fancy yarns, and on just one, using Solvy and threads along with some knobby wool, I did some free motion stitching to attach the wool, and liked the result of that too.

Here are some photos of the scarves. I will definitely do some more of these, they are a LOT of fun to make!