making stuff

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My brother and his family are in the Society for Creative Anachronism.

My sister-in-law spins wool into yarn, knits, weaves, nalbinds, makes soap, makes cheese, makes mead, sews garments from woven cloth, makes jewelry by weaving wire (I can't remember the name of the technique), and a lot of other things which escape my memory at the moment.

My brother is a knight, and makes banners. The banners are on extremely light-weight silk, so that the slightest breeze will flutter them.

Here is a banner design, enlarged to its final size.





Here is the silk, stretched, with the design's lines drawn in a permanent (not water-soluble) resist. The resist encloses complete shapes, stopping each color of dye from mixing with its neighbors. The permanence of this resist allows it to keep the edges of the banner from fraying, and its darkness adds definition to the boundaries between the colors.

Look at the bird's tail -- it is one shape, but clearly indicates the feathers.....

It was interesting to look at this from a stenciling point of view ... some of the same sorts of design considerations came into play as would in stencil-cutting.....





Color tests. The main background of the banner will be light blue. It takes a lot of white to lighten up a dark color......





The pvc frame is cool -- has legs to hold it up so that even if the silk sags a bit it won't rest on the table.

And look at this stretching system! Ingenious.





Painting on the dye. I was invited to play. I did the red bits.






After the painstaking work of creating the design, doing the enlargement, tracing the lines onto the silk, and going over those lines with the resist, the actual painting goes relatively quickly.

The long black strips at the far end will be streamers.







I will have to verbally twist some arms to get to see pics once it is finished and hung. (Pretty please?????)

My brother teaches this. I can put you in touch with him.......

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