Update on Rust

I had one of my "What if......." moments the other day. What if I took a piece of my rusted silk and added some silk paints? Then I thought .... What if I also added a salt or sugar resist? A couple of days ago I popped some of my silk scraps into the rust pickling mix. I also added a larger whole piece to another pickling mix...... and waited ........

This has been niggling in my head for the past couple of days. I couldn't wait any longer ..... not because I am impatient you understand but for experimental reasons . I checked on the scrap pieces of silk and WOW! they had rusted beautifully. Great colour and texture. I limited myself to taking out only two pieces. I shall take out another two tomorrow and so on each day just to see if there is a difference in the length of time they are in the pickle mix. The photograph above shows my pieces laid on the lawn with the silk paints. I rinsed the silk to remove the vinegar and kept it wet to apply the silk paint. The silk paints are heat set.
I chose to paint one piece with orange and the other with turquoise, I think rust and turquoise are gorgeous together don't you? I used course sea salt on the turquoise piece and sugar on the other piece. The silk with the salt resist dried very quickly and here it is. Beautiful or what? I really love this and have already put a nice big piece of silk in to pickle to do this again (bet it doesn't work this time!). I have also put in a cotton piece for pickling and want to try procion MX dye with that piece.

Where is the orange piece you ask. Well it is still drying. I forgot how awful the sugar becomes. I should have remembered but was too keen to get the results. The sugary piece got stuck on the bubble wrap. I have removed it and it is currently drying on the lawn.

I am not sure if either of the resists has worked too well since the fabric was lying directly onto the bubble wrap. Next time I am going to frame the silk that way I should get a far better salt resist design. That's why I put a larger piece in today. I shall wait a couple more days before I take that one out of the pickle.

The scraps won't go to waste even although they are just experiments as I intend using them in my postcard swap.