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 s t o r i e s do you have a funny or absolutely horrendous tale to tell about a disaster you've had while painting on silk? how about a disaster which you saved, can you tell us how? it will be fantastic for us to share some of these hiccups to help other silk artists, and hopefully even have a laugh along the way ... .
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T
he Tale of The Rocketship Steaming Disaster
A couple of years ago, close to Christmas, my student Laurie and I had become great friends and decided to paint up a storm (that's "a lot" of silk for non-Aussies) and try out my new 6'/2m high silver silk steamer. We had been painting for weeks on end, painting silk for Chrissy prezzies of all kinds and finally we were ready. Out came the gigantic industrial roll of paper purchased at the paper factory, it took 2 of us to struggle to lift it up onto my worktable ... whew! We very carefully lay all the silk scarves and metres of fabric on the white paper, keeping the silk away from the edges, roll up, pull the paper, roll up, pull the paper ... When the silk was all rolled (and it was a chubby little roll, let me tell you!), it was time to suspend in the new "rocketship". I'd only ever used stovetop horizontal steamers so this was a new experience, and it was at this point I realised that there weren't enough gadgets to actually dangle the wrapped silk anywhere. I'd been sold the steamer for a huge amount of money (over $A400 4 years ago), brand new, and received a unit which sat on the floor to boil water in, plus the cylindrical shape made of aluminium and covered with silver padded outershell. The instructions came on a piece of paper saying, "Suspend silk from rod, cover with towels or teatowel". Now if any of you actually have one of these steamers, you'll know that those instructions were a little bit short of real. I had a silk book from the USA which had photos of how to suspend the silk, so we pored over that for a while, dug holes into the top of the cylinder we had used for the length of silk, made a hook out of a coathanger and hung the whole lot on another piece of coathanger across the top of the steamer. We assembled it all, put towels and phonebook on top, set it for 3 hrs, and we took ourselves out to the balcony for a glass of wine. As the sun was setting, I thought I hadn't smelled that familiar "paper in high pressure steam" smell I've come to love over the years, so I checked the steamer .... DISASTER HAD STRUCK! I SCREAMED! Laurie came running over as I lifted the cylinder up to reveal that our beautiful roll of paper had bent the coathanger bit in half (you could all see this coming ... right?), and you guessed it, the whole roll was resting IN THE WATER ... We were shocked, we were stunned, we ran around like chickens with their heads cut off, we didn't know what to do, I felt so so guilty as Laurie had spent weeks on her silk and it was for all her family in the USA. I was griefstricken that I'd ruined her Christmas. Well, when our tears dried up, we salvaged what we could, which was mostly the top half of the rolled silk, and yes, we lost a lot of good silk that day, but I could never throw it away. The good news is it taught us both a valuable lesson in engineering, and I've now perfected the silk-hanging-in-the-cylinder technique and have never had another accident. The ruined silk when dry had quite an unusual look to it, and ended up being used for silk cards and small projects so all was not lost. Moral of the story? Never throw silk away, you never know when it might metamorphose into a beautiful something-or-other ...
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Telltale Signs of Silk Painters
Mary recommends toothpaste to remove dye from fingertips if you have stubborn paint stains. |
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