More of that Hand-painted Silk

I call it weaving-lite. It’s what I do when I want to weave but don’t really want to think. My go-to material is hand-painted silk because of its no-fail qualities. If you want to just play with fiber on your Mirrix, use great materials and you probably will create something that is pleasing if not out-right amazing. And it will get you through the moments when your creativity light is not shining at its brightest. After all, creating art is really 95% doing it and 5% true creativity. Often we are repeating something we’ve already done with slight alterations. These baby steps keep us moving toward the rare but wonderful huge insights. And if you are like me, you can’t help but make things constantly.

Let me begin with the beginning which wasn’t weaving, but was actually turning an already woven silk strip into a wearable item. I was inspired by the below findings that I had just received in the mail. I thought they would be perfect for making a silk bracelet, and I was right.

I cut the weaving off the loom and folded it in half thereby making it a double-sided weaving. This solved the problem of all those silk tails coming off the back. I slid the closed side of the clasp onto the silk. I sewed the two sides together and then created an open space at the other end in which to slide the other end of the clasp.

Normally, I use beads along the edges to discuss the sewing thread, but in this case I whip-stitched silk around the edges. It’s a bit funky, but I really like the look.

After I finished that piece I was driven to weave another silk strip. But because I knew what I intended to do with it I buried all the silk ends into the piece so I would not have to either back it or fold it in half to bury the ends. I also decided I wanted to make some long slits. You can see in the photo below how I joined those slits in places by treating the woven strips as single warp threads. That was really fun and I love how it looks.

Some more photos from this adventure:

This second bracelet is more interesting than the first and also a lot neater. There was no need to finish the edges because there was no sewing, so it also took a lot less time to turn into a bracelet.

Then I decided to go bigger and make a small tapestry. So far, this is what I have done:

What do you weave with and what do you weave when you just have to do something  with your hands but aren’t in the mood to come up with something brand new?