How it’s made…
Blue Poppy Silk Crepe de Chine Jacket
With the drawing complete, I take my white piece of crepe de chine fabric, lay it over the paper design and lightly trace with pencil onto the silk. When the drawing is complete, I place the silk on a frame and apply a black resist to cover my pencil lines. The resist acts as a barrier to keep the dyes from spreading.
The biggest challenge to this particular piece was making a frame large enough to accommodate the length of the fabric I was painting. The fabric for the pattern I was following required the design to be painted on a length of silk 75″ in length—much larger than any frame I have so I had to get creative. I pinned half the fabric to a smaller, more manageable frame size, applied the resist and after it dried, removed the fabric, pinned the other half to the frame and applied resist to the remaining half of the design. I followed the same process when I painted the design. Needless to say, this took several days to complete.