Silk Cocoon

Silk Cocoon

I’ve been re-organising my supplies lately, and one of the things I did was put my dyed silk products into one box, and my natural undyed silk supplies in another. While I was doing this I had an idea to make a silky cocoon type pod. I had a look on google images and liked the look of ones which were more fibrey, ‘scruffy’ looking. So I started by really piling the silk on to my resist. I added a couple of bunched up silk hankies, a silk hankie I’d drafted into roving, silk throwster’s waste, schappe silk from wollknoll, different types of silk noil, some coccon strippings. I can’t find my undyed silk carrier rods, but I did find a little bag of ‘fluff’ I’d carded from silk carrier rod scraps a few years ago, so I put that on too. I did a layer of 18.5 Mic  Merino on top of the silk, then on one side I lay lengths of white pencil roving. I used 23 Mic Merino for the second layer, and then 2 layers of English 56s. I do like the way it turned out, but I didn’t expect it to be so ‘neat’!

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI thought with all the silk I’d piled on it’d be a lot more fibrey, but it does have nice texture and structure and there’s a lot of different shades.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThis is a closer look at some texture:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAnd this is some of the throwster’s waste:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI wondered if some of the texture and features would show up more with a light inside, so I used a bit of sewing thread to attach it to a ceiling light to see:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAYou can definitely see more, and here you can see the ridges from the pencil roving better:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAIt looks quite creepy with the light in, I think 🙂

22 thoughts on “Silk Cocoon

  1. The textures of the neutral fibers are really awesome, and the illumination highlights the embellishments you worked so hard to layout.

  2. Great textures. I love working with silk. It’s a great idea to light it up you can see so much more. Of that wonderful silk.

    1. Thanks, Judith 🙂
      When I was researching fibres I kept hearing about some mollusc with silky threads, maybe it’s that.

  3. Beautiful shape Zed, very organic looking, it reminds me of a seed pod and using the pencil roving along the length was a great idea too. Any thoughts on what you will use it for?

    1. Thanks, Teri 🙂
      I’m just making a few ‘sample’ pieces at the moment for the workshops I’m going to be involved in, to show how versatile felt can be. The idea for this one was that you can still use ‘too much’ fibre and create an interesting effect. I think I need even more silk and a coarser wool for the fluffy/scruffy effect I was after!

  4. I too am surprised at how neat the pod turned out! It reminds me of a seed pod and I like the mottled white/cream colours.

    1. Thanks, Lyn 🙂
      It reminded me of seed pods too when I put it on the light.

  5. Zed, I just made a pod with the Karakul fiber you sent–scruffy, indeed! Love it! You could also try Navajo churro.

    1. Yeah, Karakul would give it the scruffy look definitely! I’ve never even seen Navajo Churro here.

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