Tuesday Trip - not

No Tuesday Trip this week as Wensleydale was busy governing.

I used the time to work on the samples for the 3D piece. These are silk organza and habotai, with the wax added using a freezer paper stencil. This time I let the wax dry and then crumpled it to see if I could get the cracked wax batik look. As you can see it worked on the habotai but not on the organza. I don’t want to admit it but really the organza isn’t suitable – it distorted under the stencil so the trees are wonky, it is difficult to get the wax thick enough to act as a resist, and it is difficult to paint.

I have been reading Yvonne Porcella’s book ‘Colour Changing Hue’ and decided to try her silk painting method, which doesn’t involve a frame. You slosh the paint on the wet silk on a drop cloth or in a container of some sort. The paint congregates in the folds and wrinkles to give a hand dyed look. She uses fabric paint but I thought I would try it with silk paint.

The organza was done on a plastic cloth, the habotai in a cat tray. [I didn’t borrow Quality Control’s tray, it was one I keep for dyeing!]

I don’t’ like the look where the cloth was folded, but I do like the slightly wrinkled effect. Not sure I will use the technique for the real piece – I shall consult A1, the teacher and A2, the silk painting expert, tonight [though not necessarily in that order].

The smaller samples are of the two types of fabric on the two types of stiffening I have. One is buckram, as suggested by my book on soft furnishings. This gives a more translucent result, and the weave shows. The other is sticky backed plastic which a kind person on the C&G Yahoo list sent me. It is thicker than usual sticky back plastic and is less translucent than the buckram, with no texture of its own. As I will have to sew it to the frame I tried making holes in it – my Japanese screw punch struggled a bit and tended to slip, but I found you can get a needle through it fairly easily.

I thought the buckram would be easier to use than the plastic but, at least on these small pieces, it wasn't. The big piece would definitely be a four handed job though!