silk painted scarves

North Vancouver Community Arts Council asked me to run two workshops for them on silk painting- one for adults and one for children. I unfortunately do not have pictures to share of the adult class, since they took their scarves home to wash and set themselves, but I do have all the kids since I set and washed them at my private studio and then took them down the NVCAC's gallery for pick up.

This project required me to be brave as I had to modify it to fit into a two hour timeframe and within a certain budget. For the first time, I did not use the frames I have built from PVC pipe. Instead I used freezer paper and ironed the silk scarves onto it. I was uncertain if the resist would work as well and if the students would be able to manipulate to dyes the same way they can when on the frames.

(Building PVC frames for 9-10 students was not cost effective for the council since they cannot be purposed for other projects other than silk painting.)

All that worry was for nothing. I'm not sure why I have spent the extra time pinning silk onto frames all this time after seeing the results!

I usually run this project as a three hour workshop and have found the students work until the last minute and still need to come back to pick up the finished scarves as I do not have time to set and wash them before the workshop is over. These two workshops were only two hours and so instead of having students spend time created a final sketch on paper and then tracing it onto the silk, each student just freehanded their design right on the silk.

This minor change was all I needed to make in order to successfully have the kids finish the project in two hours. Because by having to freehand their drawings, they automatically simplified their ideas that allowed them to apply the dyes in a timely manner that allowed them to finish without being rushed.

So here is a rundown on how to do this project.

First, iron the silk scarves onto freezer paper, lightly sketch the design onto the silk with pencil, add resist over the lines (we used a water-based one), then add dyes. Once finished, pull the silk off of the freezer paper, use a hot iron to set, and wash in the sink using hot water. I iron them when wet just because I'm impatient and can't wait to see the finished product, but you can hang them to dry if you want and then iron straight.

We did this project the Friday before Remembrance Day and obviously this student had practiced making poppies at school and was quite excited to use the new skill on her scarf.

8 year old

I suggested to her to make the poppies different sizes and then because of time, she just used the dyes free form to add leaf shapes and background.

For those students who were stumped at what to draw or were a little less confident on drawing something freehand without being able to erase, I suggested just creating a design using shape.

We had polka dots,

overlapping circles where the artist changed the color at each line intersection,

and an amazing spotted cow print! Yes, a spotted cow scarf. I love the way kids think, love even more that the spotted cow became a rainbow spotted cow because she couldn't resist playing with the colored dyes.

This artist knew from the minute she arrived that she was making a rainbow scarf. She had a vision, stuck to it, and was so pleased with it when finished.

Not going to lie, there was a moment I was a little worried about the above scarf. She had such a wonderful time trying different techniques and color combinations in the stars, I wasn't sure at first how she was going to unify everything. But adding the black made all the difference and allowed each of the amazing colors to really pop and make visual sense. She also painted in some smaller stars without using resist to give a sense of depth to the scarf. I worried for nothing as the final result was stunning.

5 year old

This was the youngest student in the class. At first I was concerned about a five year old being able to focus for two hours on one project, but again, worried for nothing. She was without doubt the most focused of anyone and did not waiver from beginning to end working hard on her scarf. This was for her granny, who she was leaving to visit in Hawaii, for her birthday. The hearts are for how much the student loves her grandmother. What a special gift. I'm sure her grandmother was very touched when she opened it.

I fell in love with the watermelon scarf. I love the colors she chose, as it just looks like summer. If you could bite into a scarf, you would definitely want to eat this one. It just looked refreshing.

She also varied the sizes to create visual interest with great results.

Usually I have a lot of color choices with the dyes for the kids to choose from but in this case, the kids just had the primary colors and black. So everything you see here was created by the kids directly on the silk. 

I also had salt for them to add for texture. I have never met a child who does not like to use salt on the silk. They are fascinated with the patterns it creates.

I stressed the importance of washing the brush throughly between colors, otherwise they would no longer have a true red, yellow or blue.

I also showed them how to scrub the dye on the silk, lift the dye out of the silk, and how to blend colors for effect.

From the "ooh's" and "ahhh's" of the staff at the council when I dropped these off for pick up, I'm going to say without hesitation that each and every student used the techniques they learned with amazing results.