Hooray!!!

Thank Goodness for FedEx - the photo and construction samples for the latest magazine article project are on their way! What a tremendous relief. I sincerely hope that they meet with approval on the other end. It's a lot of work but very rewarding to see your work in print, I think.

Speaking of which - found my article in CraftStylish's Quick Stuff to Make on the newsstand today! Very exciting. At first I had a hard time finding it, as I was looking for "CraftStylish" instead of Quick Stuff to Make. I knew it would be out soon, as the web 'extra' - Make a Silk Pillowcase Project with a French Finish - was posted online.

So, all in all a good day for productivity. Even though I was sweating getting everything to FedEx on time because I was having to iron my photo samples dry just before packing them up! I still have some deadlines this week for other projects but it's a huge relief to have the samples on their way. Tonight I'll take some time to rearrange my thread racks so that I can move my computer monitor and cut out a jacket for my Felted Jacket class samples. If I have time after updating my outline for the article and submitting a proposal for another project. Sometimes creative time has to wait. But I'm looking forward to a few days to do something different after working on the same project day after day after day.

Fiber Friday - Silk from Seed to Skein

Silk - an incredible fiber with an amazing historic tradition. Lately there has been a ton of hype about 'sustainable' and 'eco-friendly' fibers, and as a fiber fanatic, I really can't help but feel that there's been some unfairness to our natural protein fibers - silk and wool - which have nearly always (when avoiding irresponsible practices such as overgrazing) been both these things, for many thousands of years. But before I am distracted by that topic, let's focus on silk.

The practice of 'growing' silk is called sericulture. According to traditional legend, silk fiber was discovered when a cocoon dropped into the cup of a Chinese princess, who, in the process of plucking it out of her cup, started unreeling it. Whether or not this is really how it all began, the basics of raising silkworms and reeling cocoons hasn't changed drastically in the 4700 or so years since sericulture began.

Silk begins as a simple 'seed' or silkworm egg. These have been inspected (or their parents) to ensure they are free of disease and kept in cold storage until the time is right (the food supply is adequate, for example) for them to be hatched.

The hatched larvae are placed on screens with huge amounts of chopped mulberry leaves, where they eat around the clock for about six weeks. Then they stop eating and start looking for a place to spin their cocoon. I've seen the cocoon nesting frames - they look like a cardboard grid. these are rotated as the silkworms will climb upwards to find their chosen square in which to anchor themselves and start spinning.

Some silkworm cocoons will be set aside to be used to produce breeding moths, and the remainder will be stifled to prevent the cocoon being torn apart by an emerging moth. Did you know that silkworm pupae are eaten? So nothing goes to waste. The moths that are allowed to emerge will breed, lay eggs and die, starting the life cycle over again.

The cocoons are placed in hot water, where the air is mostly removed by weighting them to submerge them. The cocoons are brushed to remove the undesirable outer layer (used to make various by-products and lesser quality fabrics, such as noil). Then the true filament can be found. A private silk grower has a great website that shows this reeling process. Filaments from multiple cocoons are reeled together to create a filament thread or yarn. This is traditionally wound into skeins and sold as raw silk. Raw silk is often erroneously used to describe certain fabrics. Well, not entirely wrong - as presumably those fabrics still have a large amount of sericin, or 'silk gum' left in the fabric. But in the industry, raw silk refers the the skeins of filament that are ready to be incorporated into the weaving process.

There's much, much more to all this than what I've mentioned here. If you Google 'sericulture' you will find various links, such as this one, which will give you a little more information. It's a fascinating subject. I have the great good fortune to have been invited to join a sericulture tour of Japan next May. I'm pretty darn excited about it! I am sure I'll have a lot more to tell about the amazing world of sericulture after that.

Devore for Dummies

Among my many projects clamoring for attention are some silk devore scarves. Or more correctly, scarves to be made into silk devore.

What is devore? You might also know it as "burnout" - usually seen with a satin or velvet weave so that the backing fabric shows through where the floats or pile has been "burned" away. It produces amazingly beautiful effects, but like many surface design techniques, is relatively simple to do.
How it works:
A chemical gel or paste is used that 'eats' (devours) cellulosic fibers through a chemical/heat process. By using a blend of fibers, a web of fibers remains to create the effect. Similar process is used to produce cutwork, generally using a resist of protein or synthetic thread to create the outline of the cutout design.

What you need:

• A fabric that is a blend of cellulosic fiber (cotton, rayon, linen, bamboo, hemp, etc.) and either protein or synthetic fiber (wool or silk or polyester, etc.). I prefer to work with a silk/rayon blend woven as either a satin or velvet fabric but it's fun to experiment. I have some cotton/silk blend fabric that I picked up at Sew Expo that I'll likely try to use for this technique.
• A chemical gel or paste designed for this process. Fiber Etch is the most commonly available product.
• An easy to clean worksurface
• Painter's Tape (the blue stuff) - low adhesive or alternatively you can stretch in a silk painting frame
• Nitrile gloves (preferred)
• Hair dryer
• Iron
• Stamps, stencils, silkscreens, etc. and/or applicator bottles with small tips for drawing

Dharma Trading Co. is a good place to find these supplies. For designs, I like using the silkscreens from Ginny Eckley at photoezsilkscreen.com.

The process:

1. I tape my project down to a worksurface with low adhesive painter's tape. (There are different levels of adhesion available; for fabrics you want the "delicate" surface stuff). Or else I stretch it in a silk painting frame.
2. Put on your gloves. Fiber Etch is potentially highly irritating to skin, etc. Good ventilation is also a good idea. These should be automatic precautions anytime you're working with any sort of chemical, even if it's "non toxic".
• For silkscreens, I use painter's tape to hold the screen in place while I use a foam brush or plastic card to apply the gel evenly.
• For stamps, I put a little gel on a small plastic (not paper!) plate so I can get a thin amount onto the stamp. Or I paint it onto the stamp with a foam brush.
• Stencils - similar to stamping - put a little gel at a time onto a plastic plate and use that to load your stencil brush.
• Another application idea is simply writing or drawing on the fabric using an applicator bottle. I like to look up favorite poems or quotes.
3. Once your design is applied, dry the gel onto the fabric using a hair dryer.
4. Once the gel is dry, iron the project from the "wrong" side using silk setting on the iron. The chemical is heat-activated, so make sure you iron evenly and thoroughly without burning the fabric. You may notice your designs turning brown as you iron them - this is okay. Just don't make them too dark brown or you are risking eating holes in your base fabric.
5. If you are using a delicate fabric, you can tumble the project in the dryer for an extended time rather than ironing it directly.
6. Test as you go to see if the fibers in the treated area are becoming brittle - they should start coming off when rubbed gently.
7. Once the project has been thoroughly heat-treated, rinse well under running water. The design should appear as the "devoured" fibers wash away.

That's it! Your "devore" is finished - now it's ready to be dyed or used. The example scarf in the photo above was commercially made. I hand dyed it using Colorhue dyes.