VACATION JOURNAL: THE VEIL EXPERIMENT :: tanna

Having recently purchased 3 commercial silk veils, and been quite disappointed in two of them, I decided to take advantage of my mother's large kitchen and outdoor clothesline to attempt to dye my own silk veils.

To that end, I ordered lengths of both 5mm and 8mm habotai (China) silk and an assortment of dye colors from Dharma Trading.

Mom lent me her huge canning pot for my dye bath, and I got to work.  At first it was a lot of fun, rather like dyeing Easter eggs.  3 days and 6 veils later however, it had become slightly tedious.  Still, it was enjoyable overall, and brought back memories of my high school art training - one of my professors was a noted regional fiber artist.

I would classify the experiment as successful, both because I now have 6 custom color-and-length (3.5-4 yards each) veils, but also because I learned a great deal during the process.  My decided preference is for the 5mm silk, and I will use that again in the future.  Although, for the smaller half-circle veils I can see the advantage of the heavier 8mm fabric.

There is quite a bit of dye powder remaining, and I estimate that I can experiment with another 12 veils.  The difficulty will be conducting the dyeing and drying in my one bedroom apartment.  Oh, and the fact that my stove has been broken for about 5 months. 

I ordered the new lengths of silk last night.  I guess it is time to call a repairman for the stove.

Comments

[Natalia]

Those are beautiful! I especially like the red and yellow.

[Alyra]

Holy cow, that's so beautiful!! Nice work, Tanna!!!