More silk painting adventures

Clouds of silk

I call these my silk clouds. I painted pieces of white silk organza and chiffon on the deck this week, then took pictures when the sun was low so that the sheer crumpled fabric would cast interesting shadows. I also painted more silk ribbon. I used Dyn-a-Flow fabric paint (which is very thin and spreads out well on silk), SetaColor transparent fabric paint (thicker, but I water it down) and Colorhue fabric dye. (See previous entry about Colorhue.)

It's a party! This is the fruit of two sessions of silk painting.
This could be very addictive.

It's really easy to create coordinating fabric and silk embroidery ribbon
when you paint them at the same time.
I used Colorhues for these.

Arranged for drying:

This shows how I arranged the fabric to dry in the sun. Putting it in pie tins creates a lot of creases and folds toward which the paint pigments migrate, giving you light and dark areas from the same paint application. I spread the orange-yellow silk organza on a plastic bag that I taped around an old mat board scrap. I learned the pie-plate paint method from one of my all-time favorite books, "Colors Changing Hue," by Yvonne Porcella (1994).

This group reminds me of the fruity syrup poured on shaved ice.

This photo shows how one piece of fabric can look different depending on how it's handled. On the left I pressed a few rows of pleats; the center is ironed flat; the right side was allowed to dry while crumpled.

Here's another coordinated group of silk yardage and ribbons,
arranged to dry on a plastic garbage bag.

And here is the same fabric, ironed flat.
This is the same fabric used in the blue "cloud" picture.

And what will I do with all of this?

If you have to ask, you're not a quilter. Quilters know that it will all go into the "stash" to await placement in a future art quilt or a framed fabric collage, or maybe a garment. Or maybe it will just sit in a beautiful bowl in the middle of the coffee table. I'll keep you posted!

Have a colorful day!