Some while ago, I had a wonderful session with some vintage laces and my silk paints. I was aiming for 'gentle' colours so I added quite a lot of water to my mixed paints. I was thrilled with the muted pastel colours that resulted. The lace became very wet whilst working and I deliberately encouraged the colours to blend one into the next. I also painted some tapes, bias binding, ribbon and coiled lengths of thread and yarn (cotton and wool).
A little serendipity always adds just a little magic. I hate wasting anything - dilute paints included, so I placed the lace on top of various fabric scraps - some damask, a cotton sheet, and a fragment of drawn-thread work. A second layer of sheeting was under everything. The paint flowed through the lace, tapes and thread and created wonderful patches of coordinating colour on the fabrics underneath. The top layers were quite well covered. I deliberately added 'splodges' of paint to spread across any blank areas. The bottom layer achieved an effect of 'splodges of colour' on the original vintage background. Some of the lace fragments were really very wet - so much so that I was able to use them to 'print' a shadow of the lace onto plain sheeting.
I now have great riches - vintage lace, threads, tape, ribbon, binding and fabrics in gentle coordinating colours. The image shows the beginnings of two projects. I have added some lovely vintage cotton thread, in pale blue, which had been sun-bleached at one end of the skeins - more serendipity as the thread is now shaded beautifully.
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