Monday, September 16, 2013

Silk patchwork

Patchwork with Silk Dupioni Organza vs. General silk
I make patchwork things with not only Silk Dupioni Organza but also regular silk. Both of them are 100% silks from cocoons but they have noticeable difference about hand feeling and gloss. Silk Dupioni tends to resist wrinkles, so enhance the usability of the finished fabric. Also because of this feature, it is ironed well and sew easier than regular silk. Silk Dupioni Organza is more crispy and stiff than Silk Dupioni, so it can give the final product a crisp and formal appearance. Therefore when it is made up of interior props, the works look neat, flawless.
On the other hand, the cloth silk has feeling of hand made work, soft and warm. The below photos are the wall clock done patchwork with regular silk (for cloth or scarf) and the color swatch book made of Silk Dupioni Organza.

The regular silk was soft and slippery unlike cotton or linen so it was difficult to do sewing. I used a thin silk(usually used for scarf) and did my endeavor not to make crumples on the fabric doing sewing and ironing repeatedly. But it still had a few.  From the brilliant coloring and the gloss, the silk made warm feeling.  Ah! All silks used for this clock were dyed naturally using natural dye. The light purple and blue colors came from Lithospermum root, the light pink from a Safflower, the yellow from Marigold and the pink was from Sappan wood. I like natural dyeing and I know how to do it but still doing it is so exhausted. Because the process would take a long time without chemical fixative which I don't want to use. I guess using chemical fixative is worse than chemical dyeing for the environment. Because doing natural dyeing needs pretty much amount of natyral dye and chemical fixatives. Especially chemical materials like copper sulphate give demage for the environment but it is still using for natural dyeing in many places. For now, the traditional ways of dyeing is getting more and more in Korea rather than using chemical fixative. I'm thinking that opening the blog about natural dyeing later as well.  I seem to be straying from main subject of this posting.. :)  Anyway, what I want to say in here is all  100% silk is dyed well with vegetables,  so  all silks used for this clock were dyed using natural dye.



This is the front of a book with Silk Dupioni Organza patchwork. It's also done by natural dye with marron, gardenia and indigo leaf. As I said already, I've learnt and studied natural dyeing. This book is a natural dyeing color swatch book contained cotton, silk, linen and also Korean hemp, Korean ramie fabric are included. These fabrics are dyed with same materials showing coloring level through a variety of fabrics. I chose a portfolio book suited the swatch book and decorated the front cover with the Silk Dupioni Organza, my favorite, so it looks more tidy than when it was done with general cloth silk.

If it is observed more detailedly the Silk Dupioni Organza is transparent, crispy and less gloss unlike the general silk is more like fabric and glossy.  The cloth silk is consisted of tight treads without a gap even though it's very thin fabric. But the Silk Dupioni Organza is made up of cross stripes so it's transparent by gaps of fabric. It makes different feeling from background's color, and that's why the Silk Dupioni Organza is suitable for lightings.

General silk
I mainly do fabric dyeing and also do the pattern dyeing, painting. I usually work with silk, and  nowadays  I design Silk Dupioni Organza by hand. The sewing is just my hobby for pleasure. If you do a patchwork -like quilt- profecionally, you may make things better than me. Are you a textile crafter? and Are you interested in this silk Organza? If you want to try making somethings then why don't you send me an e-mail? If it's not so big work, I'd be glad to send some this silk for your experience. :)  euntextile@gmail.com

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