How I handpaint silk cushion designs

Had fun yesterday painting a black and blue design on silk charmeuse - a bit pop art - and I've created a video of the photos I took. Watch this quick video to see how I did it:



I love making these videos and picking some fun funky music to go along with the painting :-)

Hope you enjoyed this!

Cheers
teena

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Handpainted silk cushion covers

A lovely warmish wintery day here in Sydney, and I've been having fun by painting new silk for charmeuse cushion covers.

In the photo above, the silk is 55x110cm (22x44"), and I'm half-way through painting with silk dyes. No gutta, nothing apart from the two colours.

I love hot pink and lime green, it reminds me of watermelon and summer days, the smell of fresh cut grass and jasmine vines.

While I'm painting on silk I just love listening to French music and letting the colours flow, making new shades as two intense colours blend and merge with each other ...

In the photo above, you can see more detail of the finished silk charmeuse.

Above: Step 1 - I draw a design on the silk charmeuse with my home-made black gutta-like substance made from Sodium Alginate (seaweed) and black silk dye.

Above: Step 2 : I have painted the silk half way and am now starting on the second half, laying down layers of colours.

Above: Step 3 - the finished handpainted silk, with lots of layers of colours, looking yummy and vibrant. When the colours are set, the silk will become rich and shiny with the various hues.

These cushion covers will be available to purchase on my website tomorrow:

http://abfabdesigns.com/handpainted-silk-cushion-covers.html

I hope you enjoy the bursts of colour as much as I do!

Teena :-)




Join me for a Silk Painting Adventure and a Plus Size Fashion Adventure in Paris, France!
http://www.abfabdesigns.com/adventures.html

Click COMMENTS below to send a message : View TEENA'S SILK PAINTING VIDEOS shown at right ==>

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Fashion Exposed 10th March 2009

Day 3 of Fashion Exposed! in Sydney

What a wonderful journey and adventure, being part of this huge expo in Sydney. Over 550 participants from all over the world, visited by buyers and visitors from all over the world. A marvellous time was had by all! Here's a quick video I took :



ooooooooooo

Here is one of the silk charmeuse tops I've painted:


In the photo below you can see some of my handpainted silk charmeuse cushion covers, and new sandwashed silk painted with my new patterns:


It was such a buzz to see all my silk in an expo like this for 3 days, and the contacts I made are invaluable.

Now I just need a couple of days to recuperate!

Cheers
Teena


Join me for a Silk Painting Adventure and a Plus Size Fashion Adventure in Paris, France!
http://www.abfabdesigns.com/adventures.html

Click COMMENTS below to send a message : View TEENA'S SILK PAINTING VIDEOS shown at right ==>

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Handpainted silk cushions by Teena

A while back I posted photos of a silk charmeuse cushion I'd been painting, and I've finally got around to taking photos of the finished cover on a cushion - it looks gorgeous (but then - I am kind of biased :-)

The front has a turquoise background, and purple petals - all handpainted by brush using fibre-reactive dyes and the outline I created with white cold wax:


The back of the cushion cover (below) I swapped the colours around and painted the background purple - they both look cool :-)

I particularly like the free-hand feel to the design - no sketch, just a simple flower, then painted it.

Once the design was set (overnight), I washed and sewed the cushion cover, and I'm so pleased with the quality of the silk, and the luscious feel to it - it is marvellous against the skin, and I think I'll paint a few more of these to throw on my sofa and bed.

Hope you like it! I'll be posting more photos soon of the other designs I've been working on.

Ciao for now!
Teena




Join me for a Silk Painting Adventure in Paris France July - August 2009!
http://www.a-night-in-paris.com/silk-painting-france.html

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Handpainted silk cushion cover

It's begun. My painting genie has been reignited and has been painting this past weekend and I'm soooooo happy :-)

Don't forget to click on the photos to zoom in!

I have painted silk charmeuse for a cushion cover in turquoise and purple, as shown below:


Below you can see a close-up of one side of the cushion cover:


And here you can see a close-up of the other side of the cushion cover:


The cushion covers will be available to buy on my website in a range of vibrant colours.

I also handpainted two pieces of silk twill - the photo below shows the 36"/90cm full width, and the piece is actually 45" long.



The photo below shows a second piece of silk twill - also 36"/90cm full width, and 45" long.



This next piece below is a combo of the same fibre-reactive dyes in turquoise, lime green, purple and hot pink. The crinkle cotton fabric is 40" wide and 90" long.

Fabric: silk charmeuse, silk twill, crinkle cotton
Dyes: Drimarene K fiber-reactive
Outlines: Cold wax

I am very pleased with these handpainted textiles I've just created in my new Studio :-)

Woohoo!
Teena

Join me for a Silk Painting Adventure in Paris France June 2008!
http://www.a-night-in-paris.com/silk-painting-france.html

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Handpainted silk memories

It's raining and cold here in Sydney today as we inch closer towards winter ... so I've been going through some old photos, and thought I'd share them with you ...


Above: That's me on the left (Teena) and my gorgeous friend Anca, wearing her handpainted silk charmeuse top which I made for her for Xmas (photo taken 16 April 2003). I'm wearing my handpainted silk chiffon Teena-Top in lime green and turquoise (over a white tank top to show the colours). Oh they're so bright and yummy, I love this photo!


Above: Here is a range of my handpainted silk chiffon coats which I painted whilst living in the tropics at Trinity Beach, far north Queensland (Australia) around 2004-2005.

Above: Here is a handpainted silk habotai coat I was painting around 1992. I stretched the silk on a frame, then drew the outline of the front of a coat, and painted from there.


Above: at the bottom of this photo is a whole shebang of my handpainted silk chiffon scarves, painted in the tropics about 2004. I also made a couple of cushion covers in bemsilk for my cane sofa, which you can see at the top of the photo.

Aaaaah I love the vibrant colours which I paint, the way the silk interprets my joy of life as it ebs and flows across the silken fibres to create these gorgeous patterns for me to turn into beautiful wearable art and furnishings ...

That''s my little dose of walking down memory lane today :-)

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!
Cheers
Teena!


Join me for a Silk Painting Adventure in Paris France June 2008!
http://www.a-night-in-paris.com/silk-painting-france.html

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Silk dyes, cold wax and wallpaper paste

It's been quite a few years since I've used gutta on silk to draw designs, and I do miss the drawing - but I don't miss the gutta (and removal thereof) :-)

I decided to have a bit of a play with two products to see how effective they are to block areas of the silk, and to see how they interact with the dyes and fabric markers.

Might as well make this as interesting as possible, so instead of mixing up new dyes with my fiber-reactive dye powder, I thought I'd resurrect some colours I used last year some time - at least 6 months ago (yes, I know they're not SUPPOSED to work, but let's have an adventure, shall we?).

I have sketched a small design for this test of my dyes with cold wax. The theme is hot air balloons, and a quick search online showed me that the first one was made in France with silk - what an amazing adventure that must have been!

So to tie my love of France, silk and painting together, I'll paint a French girl/woman with a hot air balloon in the background -- on silk charmeuse.

PROJECT #1 - SILK CHARMEUSE

Above: First sketch in pencil on A4/letter size paper

The COLD WAX I use I bought in France last year when I was at the silk painting festival in Chambon-sur-Lignon, and it's thicker than milk, but only just, so it's easy to paint with. The cold wax washes out in water.

OK - I forgot to take photos of the next bit :-(
so you'll have to use your imagination a bit.


Above: I taped the pencil sketch to the back of the stretched silk, then drew the design onto the silk with a thick black texta pen / marker.
I outlined some of the areas with cold wax, a product I've been playing with over the past year. You can see it clearly outside the black frame of the main sketch above.
I started to paint the colours, testing the effectiveness of the wax, as well as experimenting with marker on wax, and marker on its own.


Above: In this photo close-up you can see where the orange dye has migrated into the chin - an unexpected problem which I will leave. This happened because I didn't use any wax or resist at the bottom curve of the face.

For the skin tone I added one drop of pink dye to a small amount of water and brushed in the cheeks. After adding more water, I could then paint the softer pink skin.

The blue air/steam in the bottom left was achieved by painting the wax around the black marker outline. There were a few brush stroke curves of wax within the steam as well, then I painted the blue. With a small brush dipped in water I embellished the blue of the steam and it merged quite nicely.

With a relatively dry brush, I drew a few spirals onto the orange coat in purple.

The beret had been outlined in wax, so I started to paint with purple dye - below.





Above: the beret and balloon are finished.
Hmm - not sure whether to paint the entire background.



Above: While deciding on the background inside the main frame, I painted the outside of the frame with purple dye. You can see where the dye has reached the wax border on the right hand side of the photo.


Above: To get rid of the wax outline on the border, I simply painted the purple dye on top of the wax.

I decided not to add any more colours, so this is the finished project. Now it needs to have the dyes set, the wax removed and then washed.

1. Fixing the silk dye colours

I simply rolled the silk in black plastic and left overnight. That's it - nothing else.

2. Removing the wax

When I purchased the Cold Wax, I also purchased the Wax Out - a great little product! Simply add one tablespoon to 2 litres of hotwater, soak for 10 minutes, then wash. Full instructions are on the bottle:

Above: Batik Wax Out and Batik Cold Wax

Washing and drying the handpainted silk

While the silk was still wet, I rolled it in a dark garbage bag (trash can liner) and left it overnight. The fiber-reactive dyes will continue to work on the silk until they are dry.

The next morning I unwrapped the plastic and the silk had dried, so I handwashed it several times with a mild soap until all the excess dye ran out.

No, I didn't steam it, and no, I didn't iron-set it. I simply washed and dried it, then ironed while ever-so-slightly damp.

Fiber-reactive dyes for handpainted silk

I used fibre-reactive dyes which I had mixed up about 6 months ago. The instructions say the dye lasts a couple of weeks, but I wanted to experiment and see what happened.

After washing, the colours became less vibrant, softer, muted - very pretty in fact. Not my usual outrageous colours but attractive nonetheless ... see for yourself:

Above: Finished, washed, dried, ironed etc.
I quite like the way the black marker pen edged/merged into the waxy outline in the bottom left corner, and how the wax around the black border took on a life of its own. Makes it really interesting! This was after all an experiment, to see how each of these products acted and re-acted to and with each other.
The 'hand' of the silk is still very smooth and there is no residue from the cold wax.
I'm happy with what I've discovered on this little adventure!

If you'd like to make a Comment, please click the link below - I'd love to hear from you.

To read Project 2 with step-by-step photos, click here.


SILK ADVENTURE in Paris 2008
(YES! THAT Paris!)

In June this year I'll be teaching silk painting in Paris - it's a real adventure with visits to the silk and paint suppliers, textile museums, silk painting classes and much much more! Read more about it here:

http://www.a-night-in-paris.com/silk-painting-france.html


I hope you enjoyed this little adventure with me.

Cheers
Teena!


Click COMMENTS below to send a message : View the SILK PAINTING VIDEOS shown below.

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