Silk is my only medium. I paint on it with both dyes and silk paints. I thoroughly enjoy the feeling of painting with dye on silk and watching the amazing colors that develop in the process. Whether it is creating wearable art or a painting, I love the puzzle of making a design concept a reality on the silk.

Painting on silk has some of the same characteristics as watercolor in that the dyes and paints are transparent. Without a way to contain them they will flow until they have no more energy to travel further. The traditional method used to contain the flow of dye is to draw a resist line to create an enclosed area and then paint within that space. In the garment to the left I have used a black Neopaque paint to create the resist line.

I make what I call “Stained Glass” scarves. With silk that I have created using several different techniques as well as silk organza that I dyed. You can see an example to the lower right.

First, I choose a color palette and lay out the silks I have chosen for the scarf. After cutting them to size I stitch them together using a serger sewing machine and black thread to represent the lead in a stained glass window. I then add long strips of dyed organza, always with a yellow strip to represent sunlight. The scarf is finished with the same dense black stitching used to piece the scarf together.