FOG Tuesday – Silk and Wool Paper

FOG started the new season with a foray into paper made from a variety of fibres including silk and wool roving, silk cocoons, fire star and silk hankies. In addition we added moss, Angelina™ fibres, thread waste and anything else we could think of.

While there are many methods out there to make silk paper, we chose a simplified version which required hot boiled water, a container, netting or J Cloth™, a watered down medium and a bit of elbow grease. We used a variety of mediums including acrylic gel, semi gloss and matte, Jo Sonja’s™ textile medium and good old fashioned Stiffy™.

The process begins.

While your kettle is boiling, lay down a piece of netting or J Cloth™ in your container and start laying on a layer of silk or wool fibres, carefully pulling from your roving a thin, wispy pieces. Once you have one layer, add some inclusions (if desired) and lay on another layer in a different direction. (This is very similar to the steps you would take if you are wet felting).

Once you have made your layer, place the other piece of netting or J Cloth™ on top and carefully add your boiling water with a spoon or sprayer.
(Pouring directly from the kettle may move your layers around, so use a light hand.)

This cat litter tray was perfect for the project.

Once it is saturated, press down with your hands or a brayer to ensure that all the fibres are sticking together. Roll the layer up and squeeze to remove as much of the water as you can.

Dip your roll into a 5 parts water/1 part medium, squishing it several times until saturated and then squeeze out as much as possible. Remove the top layer of netting or J Cloth™ to reveal your sheet of paper.


At this point, you can fold over the edges to create straight or firmer edges. Cover with netting (J Cloth™) again, roll up and re-dip into the medium mixture. Remove the layers of netting (J cloth™).

We are very lucky in Calgary to have Legacy Studios quite near to us to purchase many of the fibre related supplies that we used in these projects.

Lay to dry and then use as you please. These pieces can be run through a printer, hand or machine embellished with stitching or beading, cut into pieces for use in other projects or used as pages of a journal.

Several of Jan's pieces.
Left: Merino Silk, commercial stencils, spray inks.
Centre: Very thin piece of merino/silk blend paper, coloured with coffee,
mounted on freezer paper and run through an HP printer.
Right: Hand dyed silk tops.

Left: Silk paper with moss inclusion. Donna
Centre: Silk hankies with silk fibre inclusion. Meredith
Right: Silk cocoons. Chris

FOG Tuesday Collage Exercise

This month’s collage exercise was based on the Design Principle – Unity and Variety.

It’s interesting the further we delve into Elements and Principles of Design that they all start to meld together. How cool is that?

Warm Up Collages
Design Principle - Unity and Variety

Unity creates harmony by using similar elements within the composition and placing them in a way that brings them together. For example, using all circles (unity), but varying the size (variety). Other examples to suggest unity would be the use of repeated colours, textures or patterns.

Variety adds interest by using additional elements within the composition. For example, varying the colour of the circles (variety) but keeping all the circles the same size (unity). Too much variety of elements may result in a busy composition.

The key to a great composition is to find just the right balance in your work using both unity and variety to their best advantage.