Sensational Silk

Just spend a few moments thinking what your life would be like without ANY textiles! They are intrinsically linked to so many aspects of our lives, and yet their ready availability often means that  the simple pleasures textiles provide are so easily taken for granted.  The touch, smell, sight and sound of certain types of textiles can evoke feelings of pleasure and comfort for us all in seconds.  My list of these pleasures is very long and yet there is one textile that for me consistantly sits at the top of my list - sensational silk.

These silk scarf finds at an auction in the depths of last Winter provided a great deal of pleasure for a miminal cost of £25!  Their sheen, drape and vibrant colour palette reflects much of what I have long loved from silk.  Yet conversely, one of my earliest silk finds from teenage fabric shopping sprees had a very different look.  There are many types of 'natural' silk in a range of colours and silk 'noil' was, and still is, a particular favourite.  Woven from the left over fibres after processing silk cocoons, I love its slubbiness and simplicity and I have used it to stitch clothing, curtains and much more.

In the years since I began nuturing my passion for silk fabric, I have found and worked with so many different types.  Recycled Kimono silk capured my interest some years back, both for its high quality and striking designs.  A densely woven fabric with a variety of textures, these are achieved through a variety of weaving techniques.  My long standing supplier, Jasuin, is one of the diligent traders who dismantles vintage Kimonos into their original pieces, enabling the beautiful fabric to be repurposed.

I've constructed quite a range of projects from recycled Kimono silk over the years into many small projects, including cushions, bags, decorations, book covers, face masks and boxes.  The stunning naturalistic designs are a delight to work with, it cuts and stitches beautifully and wears extremely well.  Even older fabrics can look as vibrant as the day they were first woven.  This was the first project I ever made with my inital fabric purchase and it is still one of my favourites.

Another huge benefit of silk is that is takes dye extremely well and experimenting with natural dyes was an obvious and most enjoyable journey for me.  A protein fabric like wool, natural colours from leaves, flowers, bark and roots adhere well to silk fabric and their resulting colours are surprisiningly long lasting.   This was one of my first experiments with eco-printing, a simple process that involves layering natural materials on damp silk, rolling tightly and then steaming.  The choice of natural materials is key to this fun process.

I made many natural dye samples on smallish pieces of silk during my experimentations, using a wide range of natural materials.  All were attractive and finding a way to showcase them felt important.  Last summer I began using them to create a long piece of embroidery to be wrapped around an old bobbin from Coldharbour Mill in Devon.  A project idea inspired by Somerset Textile artist Paula Simpson, I completed this over the following six months, intuitively chosing silk samples one at a time to generically hand embroider.  By the Spring my one metre length was complete.

I also embroidered this very simple shibori sample over the late Winter weeks, for a memory quilt for the late Susan Dye of Nature's Rainbow.  I shibori stitched and dyed this piece of Ponge silk in a pot of madder dye the autumn before last - set up with roots from the precious dye garden of Susan and her partner Ashley - a very happy weekend.  I, along with many others, owe much to Susan's immense knowledge, enthusiasm, and generosity on the subject of natural dye.  I will always remember Susan very fondly and with much gratitude, it was a great privilage to have spent time with her and to make a simple stitch offering to her memory quilt alongside like-minded others.

Ever mindful of the increasing price of silk, I have also recently returned to a technique I learnt long ago, to make a textile from silk 'carrier rods'.  A by product of the silk reeling process, these rather dreary looking pieces come into being when silk thread is 'reeled' from cocoons and some of the filaments rap around a rod in the machine.  While they look pretty unspiring in their raw form, they can be utterly transformed into a textile that is very attractive.

Like all silk, they take dye well and this pile in a  vibrant colours suddenly look a whole lot more appealing!  Better still, these coils of silk waste can be split down into layers, so one carrier rod can easily multiply by six.  Silk in its rawest form has a natural gummy substance called 'sericin' which is actually what gives silk its strength and elasticity.  This allows that the split carrier rods can be pressed together to make a kind of paper, which can then be used for all kinds of creative projects.

The textile created from this rather quirky technique can be easily embellished with machine and hand stitch.  This is one simple example where the fabric has been used to make covers for simple books.  The sheen that we all expect from silk is wonderfully evident and the characteristic durability and strength are perfect for book covers.  What a transformation from its humble orgins.

Silk 'fusion' with unspun silk fibres has been anther of my recent silk passions - a kind of paper making process using different types of mediums.  I have been having lots of fun this summer moulding varying types of silk fibre around all kinds of objects, including glass forms.  These simple tealights are made with naturally dyed fibres by Devon fibre artist Jane Deane, with the addition of a few pressed flowers.  Silk fusion is one of the topics I will be demonstrating and teaching at the atmospheric Coldharbour Mill in Devon, for a second Heritage Craft Festival this August - more to follow on this soon.