Explorations Episode 8: Trying to Keep It Simple

Explorations Episode 8: Trying to Keep It Simple

Today I'm going bravely into territory where potential violations of the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) Rule lurk very close by.

I'm still trying to find a way to turn a piece of silk into the image of a band of sea foam.  Last week I experimented with heavy silk crepe de chine (30 mm)*, painting it and then puckering and pleating it.  Today I experimented with three other kinds of silk fabric:  Lightweight raw silk, silk chiffon, and a lighter silk crepe de chine (16 mm), painting each one the colors of the advancing sea foam:

Lightweight raw silk

Silk chiffon

Lighter-weight silk crepe de chine, 16 mm

* By the way, did you know that the measure of the heaviness of silk is the "momme," pronounced "mommy"?  You can't make this stuff up.  I imagine it's from the French, but I haven't looked it up, so if you know its derivation, please let me know.

Before painting these three different kinds of silk with my special blends of Jacquard Lumiere paints and Pearl-Ex powders,

 I treated them with a product called GAC 900, a polymer intended to give the fabric a better hand and make it more receptive to the paint.

Once these three pieces of silk dry, I'll experiment with getting them into tiny folds.  By recommendation and experimentation, I've found that the best agent for making sinuous, tiny, narrow pleats is a product called Fabric Magic, http://www.pellonprojects.com/products/fabric-magic/,.  I'll layer each piece of silk with Fabric Magic and quilt batting and make parallel rows of stitching to get the sinuous folds into the silk.  The silks have to be cut 30 percent larger than the intended final product to account for the extreme shrinkage that occurs when Fabric Magic is exposed to steam.  This time, I'll make the stitching more uneven so that it looks more like the real thing:

These pleats are way too even and close together.

The real thing is much more random: 

When the silk dries, I'll experiment with different spacing of the rows of stitching so that they make both thick and thin strips of foam.  The thinner strips are toward the right edge of the moving band of foam, where the layers are accumulating as the tide advances from left to right.

While I wait for the silk to dry, I can experiment with the thread painting I'm planning to do in the troughs of the sand ripples.  In the actual photo I'm using, the troughs contain groups of shining bubbles:

Now I can fool around and experiment around with different threads and different ways of showing these bubbles:

These are not too hard to make.  The danger, if there is one, may be making too many of them, thus violating the KISS rule.  I also want to add tiny clear beads to the final product.

Meanwhile, though, I have to confess that I'm mesmerized with the swiftly flowing channels in this other photo:

This water is flowing, flowing, flowing, inexorably, with a power and a sparkle that delights.  I would love to find a way to show these ripples within ripples, but so far this is the best I get:

These images in no way reflect the constant move and sparkle of the water in the photo immediately above it.  It's going to take a lot more experimentation to get these stitches to look like that flowing water, and there are potential violations of the KISS rule lurking very, very close by.  I think that means I have to take a break for the rest of the day.