Silk Scarf Painting

I saw the Kimberly-Little Chute Library was offering a Silk Scarf Painting Class for free but space was limited. After checking the calendar, I signed up. I just getting into the whole scarf thing and I thought this would be a fun way to add to my meager collection. It turned out that one of the librarians took a class from Sandy Melroy, owner of Silk Sensations and thought it would be a fun activity that the library could offer. Needless to say, I wasn't disappointed and it was a lot easier than I thought it would be.

After a brief explanation of the different types of scarfs, patterns, and techniques and a quick lesson on scarf painting Sandy turned us loose. Sandy already had the scarf ironed onto freezer paper for us.

Photo Courtesy of Kimberly Little Chute Library Facebook Page

The first thing we did was to use Gutta, a solvent that keeps the white space white, to make lines, shapes, and other designs on our scarf. Once the scarf is dry and you wash out the Gutta, wherever the Gutta was "should" still be white. I decided to do circles. Then we used to hair dryers to set the Gutta and it was time to paint. However, things got delayed because too many hair dryers going on high at the same time will blow a fuse and then the librarians scramble to call maintenance to find out where the fuse box is.

Bubbles (aka Circles) in Gutta

We could pick up to 4 different dyes for our scarf. Initially I was planning on doing double blue and gold so I could wear my scarf at convention in July. Yeah, well... that never happened. I saw the chartreuse and hot pink and ended up going with Chartreuse, hot pink, Sun Yellow, and a bright blue. I started with the yellow and painted it on in diagonals. Learning my lesson, I made sure the blue was not next to the yellow to avoid it becoming green.

Instead of a very classy double blue and gold scarf, I ended up with something that looked like 60's tie-dye. It was very bright and colorful but I wasn't sure if it was a look I was going for. There wasn't much I could at that point anyways. It wasn't like I could wipe off the dye and start over. So 60's tie-dye it was.

After I finished painting, it was time to add texture to the scarf by sprinkling it with salt to make the colors bleed. The salt soaks up the dye and you end up with the colors spreading and "pockmarked". We could use table salt or coarse salt. Depending on which kind of salt you use determines what kind of color patterns you get.

Then we had to wait.... 3 days to be exact. Because we added a solution to the dye to make it set, it took longer to dry. If the solution wasn't added, we would spread hours ironing our scarf to set the dye as each section of the scarf had to be ironed 3-5 minutes. I don't know about you but I don't like ironing at all so 3-5 minutes for each 6-8 inch section of 48"+ scarf just seems a bit tedious. I'll be happy to wait 3 days.

After 3 days, my scarf got a nice bath in the kitchen sink to get out the Gutta and salt. After the bath and towel dry, I only had to iron it dry... probably like 10 minutes max.. if that.

The colors did mute some so it isn't completely 60's tie-dye but it still bright and colorful. Because I tend to wear a lot of blacks and grays, it will definitely give some of my outfits a bit of pop.