Bathing Beauty and Dog on Silk Finally Get Some Color

Yesterday was Easter Sunday and despite the fact that my pain level has been high I pushed on with the custom order I am working on. After doing all the prep work on the 9 paintings, (was 8 but he added another one), it felt good to finally be putting some dye onto the silk. The project started with me doing 9 sketches, then transferring those sketches onto the silk with water soluble quilters pencil. Once the drawings were on the silk I stretched them in the silk stretcher and applied resist that I had colored with black dye. The resist was allowed to cure overnight then I took the silk off of the stretcher and rolled it onto a stainless steel core between sheets of interfacing and wrapped the outside of the roll with brown framing paper. Once rolled resisted silk was placed into the silk steamer for 2-1/2 hours to set the black dye in the resist and to activate the resists holding properties.

Then yesterday I finally got to paint in the colored dyes on the first of the 9 resisted & steamed silks. Now I feel like the end is at least in sight on this order. Today I will take the bathing beauty painting off the stretcher, roll it up in interfacing & paper on the steaming core and steam it for 3 hours to set the dye. Then I need to find a container big enough to rinse the painting in so that I don’t get back-staining from the black resist.

My joint pain is at a very high level today and last night I finally had to get out of bed around 2:00 AM because the pain was so bad. I walked around and did some stretches and then spent a few hours dozing in the recliner propped up with pillows so today I not only hurt but I am tired too. Despite all of that, I am making good progress and feel that I will have the order completed within the 2 month deadline I was given.

The dyes are still wet in the photos below