Tuesday, September 25, 2007

silk saga...finished. (for now)

Managed to finish the scarves yesterday....

I overdyed that soft yellow one with the red, but was disappointed that the yellow doesn't look yellow on the completed silk. I wonder if the Presist took out the Dye-na-Flow. The funny thing is, that salt that I thought was doing sweet-twiddle-all really did work! That's where the lovely bits of yellow show through! Sorry it doesn't show in the pics.

The purple one looks verrrry purple, not so blue as in the photo at right. The zippy-zappy one came out wonderfully fall/Hallowe'en-ish.

My fave though, has got to be the blue with flowers. It's closest to my long time favorite silk scarf that I've worn for years. Dad gave it to me a really, really long time ago, and it's been a wardrobe staple every fall and winter for at least 12 years now. The colours have stayed strong, but the silk is finally deteriorating after years of daily knotting and unknotting.

I think if I were to do this on a large scale, I'd get into using acid dyes. The Dye-na-Flow is a good 'gateway drug', but it's not doing it for me the way I thought it would....it's a little granular when used heavily. I want those wonderful clear luminescent colours unencumbered by sediment that only come from immersion dying. Don't get me wrong, this has been fun...and until it seems the right time to make a major investment I'll certainly do this again. I'd like to try it using stamps with the Presist, or getting some kind of thickener for the Dye-na-flow so that I can stamp with it. I may yet get those Shiva Paintsticks out for use here, too. Who knows. The sky is the limit (as usual...how come there are so many things to try, so few hours to do it in?)!

Lisa

3 comments:

Donna said...

I absolutely love the pink scarf! The yellow may not have shown through the way you intended, but the scarf design and dyes have a wonderful flow to them

Vicki W said...

They all turned out great! I may be way off base here but my guess on the red scarf is that you are just seeing the effect of the strong red overpowering the pale yellow. There's so little of the yellow exposed that maybe it simply can't hold it's own against the red. Don't know for sure but personally I have to continue to learn the lessons of the effects of different colors next to each other when I select fabrics for quilts! Regardless they all look fantastic and you potentially have a big jump-start on your holiday gift list - if you can part with any of them!

Joyce said...

Great job on the scarves. I've done a lot of silk painting and I use Dupont Silk Dyes and gutta as a resist. Dupont dyes give wonderful colors but they do have to be steamed to set the color.