The Splendor of Silk by Betsy Robb Originally published in Needle Pointers, Volume X, Number 3, Fall 1982 Editor's Note: Betsy Robb of Durham, North Carolina is a nationally known canvaswork teacher and designer. She teaches the Silk and Metal Threads Correspondence Course for ANG and is on the faculty for the ANG National "Texas Tenth." She is the Director of Teacher Certification for the Valentine Museum and co-teaches the museum's Color and Design Correspondence Course. To those who embroider with silk, the fibre itself represents the ultimate in luxury. It is appropriate, therefore, that we, the embroiderers, give back to the fibre our ultimate in effort. To do this in a fitting manner means planning our uses of the silk carefully and with all the forethought it deserves.

This handsome handbag designed and stitched by the author shows silk worked to perfection.

SILK! The very word conjures up thoughts of "soft," "supple," "smooth," "shiny;" all euphonious and all evoking feelings of luxury. Madison Avenue ad men have been glamorizing their products with these very words for years -- applied to everything from cosmetics to whiskey -- and all with the connotation of "ultimate." Do you wear your silk blouse to the office? I don't. Mine is saved for those best occasions when I want to feel very special.

So, perhaps silk is not for our everyday embroidery. Perhaps it is for those very special pieces of canvaswork. After all, we are aware "form follows function" and most of us would not plan a silk piece to be walked upon or sat upon at the breakfast table. Unless you are very rich and well able to "support your habit," cost alone would dictate that silk threads be saved for best occasions.

With my silk clothing I wear my best shoes, my sheerest hose, my finest coat. I want the feeling of luxury to be total. With my silk embroidery I use my most careful techniques and plan very special stitches to enhance the fibre.

You probably have techniques and stitches of your own to handle your silk work. May I share a few of mine with you? We know that silk refracts light. Many shiny fibres reflect light, that is bounce it back at you.This is true of most of the shiny synthetics such as Marlitt. Silk, on the other hand, refracts light and bends it around an angle. The eye will carry along the length of a silk stitch until it bends to enter the canvas and the light bends with it. If one works silk through canvas in opposing directions, one gets a variance in refraction that can appear to the eye as a total variance in hue or value. The longer the stitch and the smoother the silk can be made to lie, the greater the opportunity for this wonderful phenomenon. Let me show you a few examples of this. If you will put four single strands of Au ver a Soie, Soie d' Alger into a needle and, on #18 canvas lay the stitches diagrammed on the following charts, you will experience much of this variance. The lighter the hue of the silk, the more change you will find.

 

Did you try it? Do you see what is happening? Very well, then. Now we know what to do to enhance the beauty of this lovely fibre. We need to plan long stitches that oppose each other in direction -- a diagonal that stitches from lower right to upper left next to one that stitches from upper right to lower left; a vertical straight stitch next to a horizontal straight stitch; a straight stitch butting a diagonal one. How about a Giant Rice Stitch with comers crossed twice? How about some composite stitches? How about a large Waffle Stitch? Try a Fern Stitch. Try a Stem Stitch or a Leaf Stitch. Hold your canvas away from you, tilt your frame this way and that and watch what is taking place. You are enhancing the beauty of your SILK.

Small areas of tent stitch are usually necessary for detail in a painted canvas, but tent stitch does little for silk. The refraction hardly has time to begin before it is broken. Even with this stitch, however, one gets the look (in off white) of tiny seed pearls; in black, of caviar; in green, of pave emeralds. Always a connotation of luxury imparted by the SILK.

Whether your plan for silk employs a painted canvas or one you design and create on your own, approach this lovely thread with the idea of taking every advantage of its lustre, its luxury and its possibilities for light refraction.

As to techniques, they vary with all of us who use silk and all of us who teach silkwork. Suffice to say that none of the glories of the planned stitches are really going to work unless the silk is "laid" into the canvas. If you are using a twisted silk, watch the uniformity of the twist. If you are using a stranded silk, strip and painstakingly lay the strands side by side into the mesh.

Silk canvaswork is a labor of love. Plan to labor but also plan to love.