Leaf rubbings on silk

Leaf rubbings on silk

This is another little experiment with natural materials and silk – this time some leaf rubbings. I did this activity with the children at work a couple of weeks ago, with crayons and sugar paper, when it occurred to me that it would probably work just as well with silk. A couple of leaves from the garden later, and what do you know? It does!

The rubbings are done with Derwent Inktense pencils, with varying degrees of water applied to the silk to see what would work best. I also used this little sample to practice my hand-rolled hemming. I think you can see that I started on the right and finished on the left! A finer needle and thread are called for, I think, to keep the stitching properly invisible. I also need to do a bit more practice to get the leaf rubbings just right, so I think I’ve just found a handy use for all the dye samples.

There’s a bigger piece of silk steeping in tea at the moment, waiting to be turned into a scarf. It’s two metres long and half a metre wide, so that’ll give me five metres of hem, and a nice big space to practice on.

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