Thursday, February 08, 2007

Have you tried running silk under the embellisher asked Dale?

I hadn't, so I did.




(Click on photo for bigger image)


Top left is silk needle punched onto felted wool. Top right is a piece of silk run through the needles on its own. The underneath is quite soft and the top surface is crunchy. The silk scrunched up to about half its original size. The bottom piece is strips of a contrast colour laid on top and the whole piece run under the needles. Great texture, and you can cut it up and it doesn't fray.


The silk I used was scraps of saris I got from a fire salvage sale.



While I had the machine out:




(click on photo for bigger image)




I have a jar of cellophane sweet wrappers I was keeping for zapping with the heat tool (Quality Street, my favourite!). I wanted to know if I could attach them to fabric with the needle punch. You need to make a 'sandwich' otherwise the sweet wrappers just tear and split. I put a piece of felt on the bottom and a very fine layer of wool tops (roving) on the top, with the wrapper in between. The fibres felt together and trap the pieces of cellophane. So long as you don't punch it too much it works. Then I tried putting the sweet wrapper on the bottom and the felt on top, directly under the needles (top row). That worked too, so I didn't need to make a 'sandwich'. You get a nice sparkle from the cellophane when it catches the light. I don't know if you can see that from the photos. Sorry, it was the best I could do.




After I had done this, I discovered that Emmy had done THIS!

http://emmyschoonbeek.blogspot.com/2007/02/different-backing.html


and if you haven't already, do check out Dale's embellisher blog at:

http://theembellishmentmachine.blogspot.com/index.html

3 comments:

Purple Missus said...

Which type of silk did you use Kay? I like the sweet wrapper ones - and a good excuse to collect them :)

Grangry said...

I don't know exactly what type of silk it was, some of it was very fine and smooth, like habotai, and some was fine and quite loosely woven, but not gauze.

Dianne said...

Wonderful samples! Love the silk samples. I need to play a bit more with mine I think.