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Sep 24
in Textiles 1 comments tags: Flowers, Making of, Silk Painting

The Making of a Silk Dress Coat – Part 2: Painting the Silk

In part 1 of The Making of a Silk Dress Coat I walked through the planning and preparation of the design. Now we’re at part 2, let’s get into the painting!

 

The step-by-step process of painting silk for a specific sewing pattern.

 

The Gutta Outline:

Within the tacked outline of the pattern pieces I apply the gutta outlines of the flowers. I’ve used black gutta and clear gutta. Black gutta remains black and the clear gutta washes out to leave the original colour of the silk. I also tried adding some dye to the clear gutta to get the purple colour you can see – but this didn’t work, the colour just washed out with the rest of the clear gutta. I know there are other ways to dye clear gutta – but adding silk iron set dyes isn’t one of them! Lesson learnt!

 

The iron-set gutta outline of the flowers.

 

Filling in the design with colour:

When the gutta was dry I started to layer the colour on. I use Pebeo Setasilk heat-set dyes. Using many layers of dye creates rich, complex colours. I find that the dyes loose their intensity as they dry so many layers are need for the effects that I want, especially on silk taffeta.

 

After the gutta outline is applied the first layers of silk dye can be brushed on.

 

I keep the dress coat pattern pieces up on the wall as a reference as I’m painting. I also keep my watercolour studies nearby and vases of the flowers that I’m painting.

 

The dress coat sewing pattern outline is tacked on the silk to outline the shapes for painting.

 

Adding Detail to the Silk Dress Coat:

After I finished the painting I took the silk off the stretcher and heat set it with an iron. This is a long process being such a large piece of silk, but it gave me a lot of time to think up my next big artwork! After I’d heat set the silk I stretched it on the fame again and then washed it to make sure the dye had set and to wash out the clear gutta.

 

Silk Painting featuring Australian Native Flowers by Lucy Farmer.

 

Lastly I went back over each flower and drew some outlines with Pebeo Seta Skrib+ markers. This gave the flowers more definition in places and some added colour. These textas also allowed me to amend my failed attempts at colouring clear gutta. After heat-setting the silk one more time I stretched the silk back onto the fame. The last step before the pattern pieces are cut out and sewn into the silk dress coat is the embroidery.

 

Drawing on silk with a Pebeo Seta Skrib+ fabric marker

 

Back to: The Making of a Silk Dress Coat – Part 1 or keep on going to: The Making of a Silk Dress Coat – Part 3

Related Posts: How I made a Bird Silk Painting, Making a Gold Fish Hand Painted Silk Top.

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About the Author: Lucy Farmer
Lucy is a Melbourne based artist, specialising in oil, watercolour and silk painting. Lucy loves paint (all types!) and has been known to talk about it for hours at a time.

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The Making of a Silk Dress Coat – Part 5: Mother of the Bride

2 June, 2017

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Diamante Embellishments: This Mother of the Bride silk dress coat is now nearly finished! Last thing to do is to add the diamante embellishments before the final sewing. […]
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