Dyed and Printed Silk Scarf Designed for Chocolate Baroque

This is another one of my samples for the recent TV show on the Craft Channel featuring the lovely Lace Fragments stamp set  from Chocolate Baroque.

Materials:

• Lace Fragments stamp set
• 100% silk white scarf finished with hand rolled edges
• Steam fix silk dyes (mix of pinks, orange)
• Heat fix acrylic based fabric paints (black and pink with gold mica)
• Decolourant medium (for faux bleaching)
• Frame for stretching silk while painting
• Granular sea salt
• Pressure cooker, unprinted newspaper, aluminium foil for steam setting dyes and iron for setting heat fix paints

How to make it:

1. Stretch the silk onto frame and paint with a random mix of pink steam fix dyes. Leave to fully dry.
2. Randomly splash with orange steam fix dye. Dry.
3. Paint circles with water and drop in salt. Dry and brush away the salt.
4. Lay silk onto newspaper, roll and make a parcel. It is important that no layers of the silk directly touch. Wrap loosely with foil. Steam set the dyes in the pressure cooker (approx 1 hour). NOTE: Steam fix dyes are a bit tricky for beginners but they have properties that are not achievable with iron fix silk dyes. Steam fix dye molecules remain ‘moveable’ until they are set so you can create special effects, e.g. by overpainting with water or other dyes, that are not achievable with iron fix silk paints. Steam fix dies also leave a beautiful soft handle and sheen to the silk. You could use fluid heat set silk paints to achieve a similar effect, then simply iron to set. The fabric will be very slightly dulled and stiffened by this method.
5. Wash to remove excess dye, dry and iron the silk.
6. Lay the silk over a waste piece of fabric (I used a piece of recycled curtain lining) for stamping. I found that newspapers tended to stick to the paints. I held the silk in place while I stamped sections using large elastic bands stretched over my glass mat.
7. Using decolourant stamp the lace flower, placing the flower head onto the circular ‘floral elements’ of the dyed silk. Apply to the stamp with sponge.
8. When dry iron on steam setting. This removes some of the colour from the background. This step is a bit variable as some dyes ‘discharge’ their colour better than others. This step just gives added texture to the background. Wash, dry and iron the silk.
9. Stamp the lace flower with black, the lace texture with pink mica paint. Dry then iron fix. Finally wash, dry and iron.

This project may seem a bit scary for beginners – just experiment. Silk can be a bit fiddly to handle as the fabric is so fine and paints will bleed through. Why not try stamping iron fix paints on cotton, cutting up and making patchwork bags or cushions.

A big tip for stamping on fabric. I used to use ordinary sponges to apply paints to the stamp. Using this method the stamps soon become clogged with paint and crisp stamping is lost. I have found that applying paint with a palette knife to cut and dry foam gives far superior results. No messy palettes drying out as you work either. Much better method.

I am hoping to start doing some YouTube videos soon so this would be a good tutorial to do. Much easier to see than to describe in words.

Happy stamping, Anne x.

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