Margilan Silk and Color Part 1

Color Overlays and Collage with Sparse Margilan Silk Fabric

© Pat Spark 2019

My previous blog post talks a lot about the various types of Margilan silk and my experiments with them to find out what the differences mean to me when I am designing my felt accessories and wall pieces. In that blog, I focused on using the Margilan as a background base for cut up pieces of decorated pre-felts-a version of pre-felt mosaics. https://sparkfiberarts.blogspot.com/2019/02/marvelous-margilan-silk-that-is.html  .

 

In this blog, I want to talk about another aspect of using Margilan silk - using the Sparse Margilan to alter the color of the wool fiber and to add sheen to the surface. I became interested in this while doing samples in the online class I took from Katia Mokeyeva. ("Structural and Textural Surfaces for Fiber Artists" https://www.feuer-und-wasser.com/online-classes ) I was doing inclusions, laying various plant fibers between layers of wool fiber and Sparse Margilan. I loved how the dyed Margilan altered the color of the fiber. In the photo below, the rust colored Sparse Margilan shown at the bottom was laid as the top layer on each of the samples. The actual color of the fiber is shown where I pinned back the corner. 

I was doing some new scarves for the gallery that carries my work and I decided to use up the bits and pieces of dyed, Sparse Margilan in a collage with areas of the silk overlapping so more colors could be formed. One side of the scarf was a collage of printed silk fabrics from India and the other side was the Sparse Margilan collage. It came out really well! The layers went like this:

Layer 1- cut shapes of viscose decorated pre-felts.

Layer 2 -the Sparse Margilan collage.

Layer 3 –a thin layer of 19 micron merino with all the fibers going in the same direction across the width of the scarf.

Layer 4 – pieces of Indian printed silk.

Layer 5 – wisps of viscose fiber for accent between the silk pieces. 

Felt Scarf with Indian Silk Collage (Side 1) © Pat Spark, 2019. The side with the printed Indian silk fabric collage and viscose fiber decoration. 

Felt Scarf with Uzbek Silk Collage (Side 2) © Pat Spark, 2019. The Sparse Margilan collage side with the prefelt decorations. (This picture is a bit off in its color. I think because the fiber is so shiny, it was really reflecting the lights.) The detail below is closer in color. 

Felt Scarf with Uzbek Silk Collage (detail) © Pat Spark, 2019. Detail of the Sparse Margilan side. 

Not long after finishing this scarf, I rediscovered the International Feltmakers Association – Members Group on Facebook and there was a discussion of Margilan silk. It was great fun to talk with other folks who were also using this silk. One of the people in this discussion was Lena Archbold who mentioned that she was one of the UK suppliers for this silk AND she had a video available to show people how easy it was to dye it. I watched her video and was hooked on her method. It is a great way to dye many colors in a short time. Here is a link to her blog with the video: https://www.lenaarchbold.co.uk/blog/dyeing-margilan-silk-one-two-three-easy

Sparse Margilan that I dyed with the method of Lena Archbold. 

Lena has worked extensively with the Margilan silks and she sells them on her website: https://www.lenaarchbold.co.uk/margilan-silk She is currently working on an online tutorial showing her methods of working with Margilan silk. It should be available for purchase soon-hopefully by the end of March. Lena has given me permission to share pictures of the product from her upcoming video with you. Here is a scarf and a bolero.

Scarf and dress by Lena Archbold © 2018

Bolero by Lena Archbold © 2018

I loved the look of the Sparse Margilan side of my new felt scarf so much that I decided I need to make a ruana-type garment with these ideas. But the color combinations are really endless, and I felt I needed to do some sort of samples to organize my thoughts and help in the design process. When I was doing a lot of weaving (back in the day), we used to do something called color gamps. These were stripes of colors in the warp with stripes of the same colors in the weft. It was a great way to see how colors would optically mix together when they interwove. When I was first learning about dyes many years ago, we did similar studies- painting stripes of dye on fabric and after they were dried and set, we would paint the same colors in stripes going the opposite direction. Again, this was a great way to see how overlapping colors would mix.

So I decided to do this with the Sparse Margilan silk and a background of merino fiber.

Primary Color Gamp

In this sample, I dyed red, yellow and blue silk fabric. I had white, black, warm red, cool red, cool blue and warm blue merino top that I could use but I needed to dye yellow. I backed everything with some Margilan gauze that was dyed black.

Layer 1 – Strips of Sparse Margilan silk that were overlapped along the edges to create an additional color blend.

Layer 2 – Two thin layers of merino fiber, laid out in opposing directions to one another.(orthogonal layout)

Layer 3 – Black Margilan gauze.

Layer 1 - Sparse Margilan strips laid out on my work surface - a piece of shelf grip cloth, covered with a thin sheet of plastic. A hint learned from Maria Gladchenko, sprinkle soapy water on the Margilan silk so that it can be spread and will stick to the plastic below. This helps to control it during the next stages. (The video tutorial where I learned this was Maria Gladchenko (http://www.tvfelt.com/shop/artfelt/en/artfelt). It was titled "Art Felt Stole and Bolero".)

Layer 2 – Merino wool laid out on top of the Sparse Margilan stripes. From left to right: white, yellow, warm red, cool red (magenta), cool blue, warm blue (cyan), black. I did a right angled (orthogonal) layout. I had to dye the yellow since I had no merino top in this color. Notice that the dyeing process made that stripe fluffier, but it still felted to the same thickness and density as the top that was commercially dyed. I also forgot to leave some of the fiber exposed without the Margilan silk layer. I had wanted to do this so that a person could tell readily what the beginning color was before the influence of the silk layer. Luckily, I cut the next layer (the black Margilan gauze) bigger than the wool layer and I extended the wool color onto this layer at pre-felt stage.

Layer 3 – The wool was wetted with soapy water, was pushed down and then was covered with a piece of black Margilan gauze. To do this easily, a hint from Katia Mokeyeva is to cover the wet fiber with net and push down on it to remove the air and flatten the mass. (Katia has some very good, short video tutorials which show her process of getting the fiber stack ready for the Decorative layer.  I just placed the decorative layer down first and used Katia’s methods for laying down what would eventually become my back side. https://www.feuer-und-wasser.com/tutorials) This photo shows the net covered wool in the process of being wetted out. After it is wetted, you flatten it. Use a towel on top of the net to remove most of the water. Remove the towel and the net. THEN cover with the dry Margilan gauze. Because the wool is only damp, you can put the dry Margilan where you want it and then sprinkle it again with soapy water to hold the Margilan in place.

After the piece was wetted out, I continued with the felting process. For photos of the whole process see the Secondary Color Gamp - Next post.

Primary Color Gamp – Yellow, Red, Blue Sparse Margilan Crossing White, Yellow, Red, Cool Red (Magenta), Blue, Warm Blue (Cyan), Black 19 Micron Merino