Slow Silk With Silk

Slow stitching with only silk materials is beautiful and inspiring and maddening as hell, so I don't do it very often. But while I was digging through my art fabric basket two pieces whispered to me: C'mon. Take us for a ride.

I found a scrap piece of muslin and some low-loft batting, and put them together with the two silk pieces. Once I'd pinned them together, I basted the whole thing with some oyster silk thread. The silk pieces are so thin and lightweight that they flutter if you breathe on them.

I have a small collection of other new and vintage silk threads to play with, too. The old spools are only good for embellishment on things that won't be stressed or washed, so I don't get to use them very often. Their luster is out of this world:

Sewing with silk thread on silk fabric is like stitching a cloud with cobwebs. If you try to be perfect you'll end up going crazy. But the way the needle whispers through the fabric . . . amazing.

I didn't worry about what I was doing or how I stitched or what it would look like.

The narrower piece of silk had some tears, so I stitched over them:

This is how much I got done in one evening:

Hard to see the details, I know. Here's a closer look:

I love sewing on silk with silk. :)