The Beauty of Silk

As well as all my landscape photography I have been working with some silk again. I spun and dyed some a little while ago. I just love the results that I get with this.. When you think that I start off with this:

Raw silk, It is actually a lovely pale cream/golden colour, it almost looks white until you look a little closer. The sheen on it is exquisite. As I say you start off with this and then after spinning and dyeing it you end up with this:

I wish the pictures were better. I love rainbow dyeing. I love working with colour in this way and it is true, silk does take dye ever so easily. These skeins were done in the microwave, a 3 minute zap and they are done.

Some of the photos seem to lose the brilliance of that shine, I don't know why.

The way I have been exploring colour with these skeins is through the use of the primaries. Difficult to beleive but I just have three colours, yes, red, blue and yellow. That way the colours that I am trying to find whilst experimenting are either the secondary: greens, purples and oranges. Also I mixed up some browns, in the picture below, I wanted to go from a warm chocolate brown to a tan, then a golden right through to a colder almost green/brown, it worked.

Here are the four skeins ready to use. I will be embroidering on to my felt with these. I love the contrast between the flat/matt colour of the felt against the shiny silk thread.

Tif Challenge June: Stories

I want one.
Well, you can't do for one and not the other, it was always the same when my daughter was growing up, now she is grown up she isn't jealous of her brother anymore but my grand daughter had a bag from me last month for doing so well in her gymnastic's competition and when she saw it my daughter said those three little words. "I want one"
Of course it had to have her name on it too, just like my grand daughter's. Well, I did have some fun with it. I used my new toy; the embellisher. Well, I didn't have a pattern, I started with an idea of making it somehow geometric. I began with squares with the idea of a patchwork.
I used some lovely linen which I bought at a fabric sale recently, on this I embellished some silk from behind. The effect I wanted and managed became very soft and furry a little like faux suede. One of the silks is an orange shot silk and I noticed by embellishing this a lot the colours of the orange almost seperate as they are weft and warp after all. the other silk was an old hand painted silk scarf. the effect was amazing, it was like creating a new fabric.
Here is a close up of the silk scarf needle punching that I did from behind. I embroidered her name and the surround of this oblong in my own hand spun silks
I used curtain rings and a cut down chop stick for the clasp as I liked the wood with the linen. I also used the wooden curtain rings to attach the strap.

There is a story behind this bag. I have always been interested in symbols and symbolism. I think sometimes I almost think in symbols. As I was making this bag I was thinking how difficult it is when you live so far away from family. My daughter lives up one end of the country and we now live at the other end. I know at times she would like her Mum and Dad to be near by, when things go wrong it would be nice to be able to help each other.

Well, this made me think of how I felt when my own Mum passed away. I was trying to come to terms with feeling very lost, we had been so very close for many years. This feeling of being lost I remember articulating in one sentence, I can remember saying to someone, "it's as though I have lost my compass and I have no point of reference anymore."

I felt I put something very special into the design of this bag because the circle and lines around the circle symbolise the points of the compass but I have also placed some of them to one side. It's like saying we may not be near by but we are still here. We live our seperate lives but we are still part of the same family. All the squares in the bag fit together and this symbolises a kind of unity even if we are apart for much of the time. I am going to tell my daughter to read this when she receives the bag as I am sure it will hold a lot of meaning to her too.

Well, I may be late with my June Tif Challenge but better late than never.