Marbling on silk

This Tuesday saw my first class at the AMAZING (caps because it is) Ardington School of Arts and Crafts.

I was there to learn about marbling on fabric (I took cotton & silk but the cotton didn't come out that well so in this post it will be just my silk creations on show. The course was taken my Silk expert Mary Day, seen here looking very fetching in front of one of the Ardington fireplaces. You can also find her website here

We started off with Mary showing us how to set up the marbling tray, then the different ways of dropping the paint onto the surface (you can either drop it using twigs or with a little dropper).This one was done by one of the other students using the dropper.

 The properties of the paints were then explained. If a colour spreads out quickly its referred to as 'fast' if it doesn't spread out at all, its slow & may need thinning (if its too slow it will just sink). Mary also showed us how to comb the colours to get the amazing effect below (which is one of my finished scarves)

and also how to use the stylus (old knitting needle) to drag the pain into different patterns. Here is my interpretation of the heart

and my freestyle, mad colour efforts

I also did one with teardrop type shapes utalising all the different blues I'd made. The course was absolutely brilliant. Mary was a fantastic teacher & I learnt a lot. The actual marbling itself was really relaxing (I could have played with the colours for an entire week, sadly the course ended & I ran out of fabric) but I'll be looking into buying myself a tray and some fabric as soon as out current house trauma (our heating is being replaced) is over. While looking for material in my stash I also came across these examples of Batique from a course I did in Cirencester quite a few years ago. I've always loved working with fabric & I should have an exciting announcement on that score very soon! But for now enjoy the colours.