More To Be Curious About

That's what a 12" pile of snow looks like

We suddenly got some winter, starting over the weekend with plunging temperatures and high winds yielding below zero windchills (reminiscent of my Wisconsin Days) and then segueing into a 24 hr or more steady snowfall that at last check has us at about 14 inches. Apparently there will be another small round before daybreak tomorrow yielding another mere 3 inches. All very light and fluffy, this snow, so easy for me to clear the small bits my neighbor doesn't do for me (that's his snowblower in the above picture), but keeping the roads slick so an easy decision to stay home today, and stay inside altogether over the weekend to avoid frostbite!

So it was a good time to pursue another thing I've been curious about ever since art group friend Meg let me borrow her book, Bags With Paper And Stitch by Isobel Hall, at least 3 years ago. She has been exceedingly patient about its return any time I've brought it up. Even so, I should get what I need from it or buy my own copy! I was initially enthralled by the beautiful purses within, and then intrigued by a short section on silk papermaking. And I do mean short. The instructions left me with lots of questions, so more recently I searched around the internet, discovering that this is also referred to as Silk Fusion. A really good source of information, instructions and the silk used in this process can be found here at Treenway Silks. With that I should have been ready to go, but still I dragged my feet, until I paged through the February/March 2019 issue of Quilting Arts Magazine. There was the final prod, Tamara Leberer's The Art of Silk Fusion article. It had even more process pictures and detail instruction, so time to put aside my fears, see that I had everything I needed on hand, and go.

I'm not going to give you step by step instructions as those are readily available at Treenway Silks. As I worked through the process, I kept thinking that it was a lot like the wool felting process. You lay out your pieces of silk roving and wet generously with soapy water. Screening on top and bottom holds the roving in place. The dark areas you can see through the screen are wisps of dyed roving, of which I only have a little, so I used it sparingly over the natural roving on this first try.

Textile Medium before brushing evenly across and through surface

After the roving soaks water into its fibers, it's time to add the "adhesive". My various sources lists three different kinds (and the encouragement to experiment with others). Whether you want something fabric-like or something very stiff like paper will determine which product to use and whether or not it will need to be diluted. I wanted something more like fabric on this first try so went with Textile Medium. This gets worked through the screening front and back with a brush, just like the water. None of the directions were very precise about amounts, just indicating to be liberal and sponging off any excess. And that's it. Now you wait for it to dry before peeling off the screens.

Having never seen a piece of silk fusion in real life, never held a piece in my hand, I didn't really know what to expect. Descriptions led me to believe the finished product would still look like silk with its distinctive sheen and be smooth, not textured. So it was with some disappointment that the big reveal revealed the same issue I'd had with my first papermaking effort: the surface had picked up the texture of the screen, the thickness varied across the piece, and it felt like I was holding a heavy piece of paper toweling, or at best, watercolor paper.

And boy, was it stiff, at least in my estimation, not fabric-like at all. Look how it stands up when leaned against something and barely droops when placed on top of my water jar.

I was hoping without much faith that during the heat-setting process, some if not all of that texture would smooth out. No such luck. But the more I looked at it, the more I realized that it looked like the weave of some fabrics. So that could be a plus. But as I squint closely at the photos of Leberer's fusion, I can't see any textures even though it looks like she used the same kind of screening that I did.

So once again, a promising experiment has left me with questions, primarily why? Why take silk roving and do this to it, coming out with something that doesn't resemble silk at all? How would I incorporate something like this into my work, either quilting or multi-media? I'd had visions of it working as a book cover in the stiffer version and that is still a possibility I suppose, if more dyed roving was worked into the final layer. One is supposed to be able to embellish this with machine or hand stitching, beading, stamping and the like. My mind drew a blank with this particular piece. Maybe some of those coral-like images I discovered from my paint and glass experiment could be stamped on?

I have more roving and enough curiosity left to try this again with a different adhesive. The Gloss Varnish might give me the silk look that is currently missing, although this is billed as a stiff end product. I think I now know how to get a more even distribution of roving fibers down and wonder if the stiffness with the textile medium is because I used too much. Finally, the book's instructions call for netting, not fiberglass screen which may leave less of a pattern across the surface. All things I feel worth exploring before giving up on it. After all, I did rather enjoy the process, if not totally the results.

Parts of this process are the sort of things that one wishes one could watch someone in action doing it, be in a class room with a teacher, view a video of. And well after the fact, it has occurred to me that there probably ARE videos of the process on-line so will have to check that out. In the meantime, while googling Isabel Hall to see if she had a website, I found her video demonstrating a different method of creating silk paper using what she calls cocoon strippings and not requiring the use of an adhesive. Not sure my roving is the same product but I think this is more to my liking.