Silk Paper fun

On Saturday morning a few lovely ladies met and we tried our hand at making silk paper which is also called silk fusion. On a piece of window screening I gently pulled layers of silk fibre apart until I had 3 nice layers.  I cut bits of organza over it and laid a piece of gold metal thread on top as well.

 I made a 2nd small piece with 3 layers of silk fibre gently pulled apart to which I also added a few embellishments of bits of thread and glitter.

Here you can see that I made one longer piece at the bottom of my screen.  The silk fibres were ordered from Treenway Silks and they have beautiful colours of silk fibres as well as threads and yarns.

 I put another piece of window screen over top and made it all into a sandwich.  We then proceeded to gently wet our pieces down using soap and water and then used a textile medium called Jo Sonja's Textile Medium to adhere all the fibres together.  We turned our screen sandwiches over and wet the other side down as well. I took my wet pieces home and then gently took off the top screen.  After a couple of days my pieces were completely dry and I now have some beautifully soft and light silk paper to sew and stitch on!!!

 At this point I have no idea what I'm going to make with these pieces of silk paper. One woman in our group was going to make one of her pieces into a book cover, someone else made some gorgeous looking leaves which she is going to stitch stumpwork beetles on but I'm not sure yet what I'm going to do with mine.

Here are the 4 pieces that I now have to stitch on.  Hope I can get creative and think of something neat!!