Yesterday was a Monashee Group meeting and JoAnne did a demo of Silk Fusion. The Group is a gathering of spinners, knitters and weavers who meet weekly at one another’s homes on a rotating basis, usually just to visit and show and tell; but, yesterday was something special.
The session began with the tools needed to make a card insert. For each card, you will need 2 screens the same size as the card. Generic fly screen is used in this case, but toile or other fine mesh fabric can also be used. 
Silk fibre is a given. It’s a great use of those wee bits of very special silk roving.
Acrylic medium to set the fusion is important and can be found here along with complete fusion instructions.
On a large stack of towels, (this is a messy business!) you lay your first screen down and using a very fine film of silk fibre, you cover the screen horizontally. Leave the overhangs in place as you will need them later in the process.
Here the screen is covered with the first layer.
Gently pulling the fibre vertically you again cover the screen – remembering ‘less is more’. You can do another horizontal layer if you like at this time. 
JoAnne uses these purchased embellishment bags to garner small amounts of ribbons and yarns for the decorations. A few sequins are added too.
Placed in a random pattern, it’s very pretty. If you like additional wisps of fibre can be laid over the embellishment. 
An old card is placed over the finished product to ensure that the placement is in exactly the right place visually. 
The second screen is placed on top of the silk.
Using a 2” brush and some water with a splash of soft soap, you drench the silk completely. You will have to apply lots of water and turn the silk over a couple of times. 
Now with a mixture of half water and half Acrylic medium you again drench to silk on both sides.
Amazingly it’s done! Now with a couple of clothes pins you hang the screens to dry. The next day you carefully pull the screens away (the overhanging wisps help here); now trim away the excess. 
Here are a two more of JoAnne's finished cards.
The card stock is from Cardblanks.com and the cards come already pre glued and are of very high quality.
The card stock is from Cardblanks.com and the cards come already pre glued and are of very high quality. Overall it was a very informative afternoon and I think I may be hooked!
9 comments:
Lynnette - that looks really interesting and great photos ! I haven't seen anything like that done before but what a great idea for birthday cards or even Christmas.
No room in my brain for new hobby though, weaving challenging me quite enough at the moment ! 21 cones of Tencel somewhere in (on top of I hope ) the Atlantic heading for Scotland !
Wow what a great tutorial!!!! So many pictures and information. Looks like you had a lot of fun. Thanks to for the link to where you got the cards. I've been looking for one for ages.
Thank you for extending the class to your blog readers!! This looks like it has lots of possibilities! Beautiful.
That looks like a lot of fun... very creative! Thanks for sharing the technique..
Great tutorial!
Susan
PS Dorothy placed an order from Yarns Plus...and it's on a slow boat crossing the Pond :)
Lynette,
I have done that years ago (at an embroidery class) and forgot all about it. As it is, I was wondering how to make a cover for my, very ugly, ATC (artist trading cards) book. Now I know!!!!!! Thank you for the turorial.
Thank you for a great tutorial, what an interesting day it must have been!
Wonderful tutorial! I've tried this but only did one piece around 12x12 out of it to use for a purse. You've enthused me about trying it again.......will add it to my long fiber to-do list. I really appreciate the link to the trifold cards - those are wonderful cards!
thanx for posting this tutorial. Now I don't feel half as bad about missing the gathering. Your tutorials are exceptionally well organized and illustrated. I feel I could easily try this on my own with success.
Rosalie
That sounds like a great group to belong to!! Your cards came out great and I've never even heard of silk fusion, so it's great to see a tutorial on it!
Sue
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