Painting Silk Ribbons

This is a really easy way to paint silk ribbons, as it requires no "painterly" tools. I use YLI white silk ribbons and Pebeo SetaSilk silk paint.

1. Put a plastic wrap on top of a piece of white paper, and cut out the approximate length of white silk ribbons.

2. Pour out a small puddle of paint onto the plastic.

3. Dip the end of the ribbon into the paint. The ribbon will start wicking up the paint. Drag the ribbon through the paint.

4. When you are close to the end, use chopsticks to finish dragging the ribbon through the paint. If you are not competent with chopsticks (and I think that everybody should be proficient with this very elegant and useful utensil) you can use tweezers instead.

 5. Allow the ribbons to dry, iron to set the paint per the Setasilk instructions. Voila! Bright yellow silk ribbons.

MC Step 3 - Color Contrast

I've decided on the piece to demonstrate Color Contrast for the Master Craftsman Step 3. I'm half way through with the essay but just can't resist starting on the stitching - which is better than all the way through with the stitching before starting on the essay! Instead of simultaneous contrast which requires the judges to stare at the piece until the after image color shows, I am doing complementary contrast, and probably value contrast. I bought some tulips and arranged them to come up with the drawing.

I started with my test piece on cotton, as usual. I added salt to the painted tablecloth area to see if the speckling added anything to the piece (it didn't but it was fun anyway). I tried at least 6 different ways to stitch the tulips (with and without padding) before I hit on the idea of using silk ribbon. As I resist buying any more supplies (ie. yellow silk ribbons) unless I can't make use of existing stash, I painted white ribbons with silk paint.
The top, bottom tulips are painted silk ribbons, the ones in between are various failures, stitched and restitched with cotton floss. The white tulip at the bottom was the first successful test flower, that I wanted to try out before painting the ribbons. The white leaf also looks best. I'm ready to move forward with a silk piece - or at least version one of the silk.