We had a fabulous day today with Angela, learning how to make a silk paper vase. Angela had shown us last week in her talk what we would be doing on this day school, so some of us had already thought about our colour scheme. Angela brought many samples of her gorgeous work, so we knew what we were aiming for, which is always a help in knowing what we should bring, so we didn't have to bring the kitchen sink today!
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Angela's work
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Angela had brought made up kits for us, including a choice of two glass shapes, a comprehensive selection of silk tops and beads, and the dissolvable fabric. Once we had chosen our colour scheme, we followed instructions and made a 'sandwich' with the dissolvable fabric. Firstly a layer of white silk fibres teased out to fit the fabric, then another layer of the coloured silk fibre, not too thick, and then we added snippets of threads and gauze, or trimmings, to trap in the sandwich. Then we laid the second piece of fabric on top. We machine stitched on this to trap the fibres, using some of the decorative stitches on our machines. The we added beads and embellishments to our heart's content.
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Making the silk fibre 'sandwich'
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Once the sewing was finished, Angela showed us how to invert the glass over a kitchen roll holder, in a bowl, lay the sandwich over it and put warm water to dissolve the fabric.
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Dissolving the fabric
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It was quite tricky to judge how much fabric to dissolve - too much and it wouldn't stick, too little and it was slimy and gloopy, bleahhhhh! Once we got it right, we dried our vases with a hairdryer, manipulating the wise bits at the top. and here are some of the finished vases.
Angela was a super tutor, she had brought everything we needed, her demonstrations were excellent and she was so helpful and enthusiastic. It was such a lovely day we will definitely be asking her to come back to teach us something else, so watch this space!
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