Last month, following her talk at our branch of the Embroiderers’ Guild, some of us took a Workshop with Linda Rudkin on Sculpting Silk Paper. In the morning we used natural silk fibres to make a flat piece of silk paper. I decided to make several small pieces with the thought of using them to make cards.
I added some woad dyed skeleton leaves provided by Linda…
…and later in the day had some time to embellish them with embroidery.
Liking the way the soft blues work with the creamy natural silk, I also added some pieces of hand dyed cotton and sashiko stitching.
In the afternoon we used solid objects such as shells and stones and formed the silk fibres around them to make solid shapes. I used two shells:
And experimented with the texture in a piece of driftwood.
Plenty to play with.
Under A Topaz Sky 
Lovely results. There’s nothing quite like the sheen that you get with silk paper.
Yes, all sorts of lovely possibilities!
What a fun day that was!! I can certainly see how these techniques could be worked into some of your books. Its beautiful and it looks fun to work with.
[…] was a piece I started at a 2015 workshop on sculpting silk paper with Linda Rudkin. Sashiko stitching on a scrap of indigo dyed sheeting. This one was completely […]