K Taltre

Jane Dunnewold sent a 2 yard cut of 10mm silk habotai dyed with Procion MX mixing blue - with tied resisted rings down the middle of the length. There were five circles on my cloth.

Before I received the cloth, I knew that I wanted to add dimension and holes to it. When I saw the cloth I felt I should keep some form of Jane's tied circles in it.

To begin, I retied the five circles with artificial sinew, wet the cloth and scrunched it into a plastic pan with the five points down. I poured hot thiorea dioxide water over the cloth - it didn't cover it - and microwaved it for several minutes until the fabric started to discharge. The discharging occurred only on the bottom of the pan where the cloth was sitting in the bath. I rinsed the fabric.

The circles are still tied - I again scrunched the wet fabric into the pan with the points sticking up and squirt bottle dyed the fabric with soda ash activated Procion MX dyes, microwaved for a few minutes till hot and steamy, waited until cool, then washed, took off the sinew and dried.

This was interesting, but kinda boring So.......

I tied up the five circles again and tied 18 more circles in a grid, and also tied some fan folds across the piece. I wet the cloth and scrunched it again in a pan, bathed it in the thiorea dioxide solution, microwaved - took a lot of color out. I rinsed and scrunced it back into the pan where I redyed with the mx dyes. Again the microwave - hot steamy - cool down - removed the sinew - washed and dried, much more interesting.

Next, I printed a couple of motifs with soda ash activated, sodium alginate thickened, MX dyes. One was my hand carved stamp. The feather was a commercial stamp. I  spritzed a little soda ash water over the cloth, wrapped it in plastic and microwaved it till hot/steamy, then washed and dried.

The feather motif seemed too strong. I thought after washing, it would back down, haha, any MX color with fuchsia in it never backs down! With my circle stamp I applied a mixture of sparkly gold paints over the red feather. Better.

Now for the holes. I cut circles of freezer paper and arranged them on the fabric and ironed them on. I stabilized the holes by applying paint around the freezer paper circles. After the paint was dry, I cut out the circles. I ironed/pressed the painted parts to set the paint.

I decided to use some "hot fix" Angelina in the holes, hot fixed some and cut into circles to fit the holes. I cut some water soluable stabilizer to back the holes so I could sew the Angelina into the holes. I dabbed fabric glue stick on the stabilizer so it wouldn't move. I stabilized each hole in an embroidery hoop, and free motioned (using the sewing machine with the feed dogs in the down position)  the Angelina into each hole. I soaked the fabric in warm water to remove the stabilizer - washed/dried.

Now for the dimension. As I  worked on the main fabric, I was discharging and dyeing several other pieces of silk in the same colors as the main piece. I cut strips of this silk and used  Misty Fuse to fuse them together, back to back. I free rotary cut triangles from the strips and then rounded two corners with scissors. If you pinch the rounded end together, the triangle stands up when sewn down. I used fabric glue stick to hold the dart; I sat at the table and glued and ironed each dart to set. The triangles were zigzagged on, around the tied circle shapes, at random.

The final process was to iron on foil shapes using Wonder Under. I then washed the cloth one more time to make the triangles floppy and to rough up the foil shapes.

Conclusion: At each stage of the process, except for the dyeing parts, I practiced the process on a different piece of silk. The holes with Angelina and free motion sewing on silk were problematic. The free motion sewing would draw up the fabric; the hoop was the answer, but I thought I'd have to take off the machine foot for each hole. I realized I could lift the foot over the hoop as the foot has a spring and the needle would go up a little more too. Foiling has always been beyond me, but I read about using it with fusible web so have made a sort of peace with it.