I have just returned from a most enjoyable afternoon of craftiness. I have just had the pleasure of attending a silk marbling workshop run by Vesile Yilmaz. What better way to spend a rainy, cold afternoon than creating wonderful pieces of art!.
Earlier in the year I attended an Ebru workshop at the Perth City Farm ran by Vesile - I really enjoyed it and created some lovely pieces (on paper). So when I received an email about this workshop I was very excited as this was marbling on silk (something I have wanted to do for a while now).
For those who don't know Ebru is the traditional Turkish art of marbling (see here for more information and examples of this beautiful art) and in the case of Vesile she uses all the traditional methods and equipment to create the marbling.
I took daughter, Ashleigh, along with me as she has never done marbling before and was keen to learn. This workshop was small, with only 4 people attending, which was great as we all had our own trough and had lots of opportunities to create some lovely marbling papers (plus two silk scarves).
To begin with we practiced our skills on paper - creating a number of marbled pieces (exploring colour and designs) before moving onto the silk scarves.
On the right is a photograph of some of the paper pieces we did - each so different and unique.
I think I will be using my for wrapping paper and making cards.
Once I felt confident enough I moved onto the 'long trough' where I was to create the design for my scarf.
This trough is approximately 1.6m in length, so it is much longer and larger than the one I used for paper marbling (these are about an A3 size). So now I had to consider creating a design for a length of fabric rather than an A3 piece of paper. See photographs below for the difference in the troughs.
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| Scarf Trough |
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| Normal Trough |
The photograph (above) on the left shows the design I created in the trough, while on the right is the finished scarf. The design in the trough is not complete as I added continued to add more colours, then created floral designs using wooden-handled needles to manipulate the inks, before transferring the design onto my scarf.
Creating these scarves is a two-person job. The design on the carrageen can be done by one person, however it requires two people to lay the scarf on the design as the fabric needs to be held taut as it is lowered carefully onto the design.
The scarf is then lifted off the carrageen, rinse in cold water and hung out to dry. Once dry it is ironed to set the design.
Above are photographs of my two finished scarves
For this workshop we used 100% silk scarves and the 'inks' are acrylic paint (with water added to create a creamy milk consistency). Before the workshop all scarves were soaked in alum for approximately 20 minutes to ensure adhesion of the inks.
I was thrilled with my two scarves (and various paper marblings) and I particularly love the fact that each scarf was unique - they would make lovely gifts. And due to this I will be attending another workshop with Vesile later in the year so I can make some 'unique' Christmas gifts.
If anyone is interested in attending a workshop or want to know more about Ebru you can visit Vesile's website for more information (Vesile is based in Perth, WA).
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