Silk Artists

One of the things I love about meeting other silk artists (do I dare call myself that) is that they totally LOVE painting on silk and they like to share techniques. I haven't taken any courses in silk painting, but I've taken a lot of art classes and I've learned by trial and error. So, it's fun to talk with other people who paint on silk and to find out that they also have learned via classes and by doing. Today, in Lake Geneva (WI, not the other one), I met Jeannine from Mystical Silks.

We chatted for a while about how to build a steamer and compared notes. One of the things I have the hardest time with is getting wrinkles out of the pieces. Jeannine said she just presses hers. WHAT??? That totally doesn't work for me. I think that it comes in the steaming. She built a stovepipe steamer (and now has several). Her first one cost her 17 cents to build! Isn't that great?! Anyway, I think it's time I try to do that. The advantage is that fewer wrinkles set in during the steaming process. One thing I have been doing already is to iron when the piece is still damp, that helps a lot, but this will probably help more.