A little workaround for stretching silk while painting

Traditionally when doing Yuzen painting on silk (or many of the other silk techniques) you'll see Japanese artisans using flexible bamboo rods with pins on either end to stretch along the width of the fabric. These are called Shinsei.

Me being me I didn't want to order some and wait (though you can get them from: Maiwa Craft Supplies) and I wanted to Be able to determine the lenths I wanted myself.

Well I was at "Scale Model Supply" a local hobby store and they had styrene model building supplies called "Plastruct" I grabbed some about 4 mm square and flexed it a bit. It felt resilient yet flexible. I decided to give it a shot.

I didn't really want to mount pins on the end as I have a habit of scraping my arm along pins that are pointing up at me. I decided to try the reverse idea. I heated a pin to red hot and quickly jabbed it down into the end of the Styrene. It cooled very quickly and didn't make it real deep into the rod (this is good). After it stopped being hot I then stuck the rod under the fabric and placed the end where I wanted it. Then I took some map pins (they're much shorter than normal fabric pins) and poked them in the ends. TADA! Poke free silk stretching!

Here are my lame-o diagrams:

The Yuzen Project - Stage.... Experimentation and the Acceptance of the need for a steamer

So I've been using "Dye-n-Flow" by Jacquard so far for my Yuzen project. I"m very pleased with many aspects of it but because it is still a "paint" rather than a dye it has a stiffening effect on the fabric. It also diminishes some of the natural sheen of the silk.

So... I'm thinking I need to try some silk dyes like Jacquard Green Label instead. (I feel the money running from my pockets).

If I use those dyes I'll need to steam set them. -sigh- I was hoping to avoid this but.... if the choice is figure out how to steam or have stiff yuzen then I'll figure out steaming.

Being who I am I can't bring myself to pay $300 - $1000 for a steamer when I'm sure I could figure out a way to make it. Also being me I don't bother figuring anything out for myself until I make sure no one else has already done the hard part :)

After about 5 minutes on google I found this FANTASTIC tutorial for making your own steamer!

The only snag I see is finding somewhere to set it up where the massive amounts of steam won't be an issue -eyes the garage- I'm hoping I can find a decent size burner at Goodwill or something as mine would have a heart attack if I asked it to do that.

I'm PSYCHED! Yipee for new project :)

And So It Begins

Hello my name is Annie and I am a craft-a-holic.

I guess that could be broadened to a "make-a-holic." I love making stuff.

My interests in the area of "stuff-making" range quite a bit but here's a quick run down of some of the more recent projects:

Yuzen Dying (aka silk painting)
Tsumami Kanzashi (Hand folded silk hair decorations)
ABJD Sewing and Face-ups (Asian Ball Jointed Doll related crafts)
Hand Kimono Sewing
Paper Piecing Quilting
Civil War and Elizabethan Costuming
Cosplay for Sci-Fi and Anime Cons
Screen Printing
Knitting
Crochet
Origami
Kimono Design

Yeah... kinda a geeky bent to it all huh ;)

The reason I decided to start a blog is that I've had to really hunt to answer some of my questions on some of these topics and I thought it would be good to post some of my trials and errors, alternatives, and discoveries to help others!

Wooohooo. Lets get craftin'