Tuesday 15 May 2012

My silk batiste fabric has arrived from England!

Yippee!! The fabric that I ordered on 30 April from George Weil in the UK, has arrived. 

6m of silk cotton batiste only weighs 400g!  It is the most incredibly lightweight silk cotton. I bought it because the website said it was suitable for devore. The devore process eats away cellulose (in this case cotton) and leaves behind protein (in this case silk).  The fabric is very shiny, looking like pure habutai silk, but is actually 72% cotton, 28% silk.  This means once the devore paste has burned away the cotton, what is left will be gossamer thin.  Hmmm.  Have I got the skills to work this.

I've just got to take a brave pill and try it.  What's worrying me is what happened yesterday.  Yesterday I was working with discharge paste (a bleaching agent).  I printed some linen with discharge, lifted the screen and had managed a good print.  But as it dried, the linen threads sucked the discharge paste across the fabric until the design was completely obscured.  Which was rather unfortunate as it wrecked the cloth and linen is expensive.  Fortunately it was only $20 worth as it was an offcut from the sale.  And the silk batiste is even more expensive.  £80 ($120) for the fabric and £10 ($15) for postage.  Maybe I will try a small sample first.  I will take advice before I use it. 

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