What I've Learned About Flat Silk

I'm stitching with black thread on a black canvas. Regardless of what thread or stitch you are using, you need good lighting in this situation!

Flat silk is on a tube with the free end run through two slits in one end of the tube. Pull the plastic wrap off the tube and roll it up and put it in the middle of the cardboard tube so you keep the thread color number on the label, just in case. Unroll 12-18 inches at most and cut it with your best scissors, then put the free end off the tube back in the slits. I found that the flat silk would easily snag on my frame, the other stitches, the metallics, etc. so I kept it off the canvas whenever possible. I normally stitched with lengths of about 14 inches on this piece.

Always use a new needle and your sharpest scissors when stitching with flat silk. It will snag on a worn eye or worn scissors. It looks like a flat ribbon made of at least 6 filaments and probably more. Japanese embroiders twist sections together to make fatter versions of the thread for their stitching but since I am just stitching long stitches, I didn't bother to do this.

Having soft hands is a must for stitching with flat silk. All my prep time scrubbing and putting hand cream on my fingers didn't go to waste!

I knotted the end of my stitching length, then did two L stitches to both start and end the thread within the area of the geisha's hair.

Flat silk is wonderful to stitch with but you need to use a laying tool at all times to make sure the thread is laid flat.

I doubt you'll be able to see the shine of The Geisha's wig in photographs but in person it looks wonderful!


Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

How to Stitch a Wig

The drawing above is my feeble attempt to show you how I plan to stitch The Geisha's wig. The arrows show how the thread will be laid. Remember that most of these areas are padded with Soy Fiber laid in the opposite direction as the top flat silk threads will be laid.

The drawing above is my feeble attempt to show you how I plan to stitch The Geisha's wig. The arrows show how the thread will be laid. Remember that most of these areas are padded with Soy Fiber laid in the opposite direction as the top flat silk threads will be laid.

Actually, half of the hair is finished. It covers the ornaments except for areas where hair ornaments poke out over the background. I hope to finish tonight if the light is good. Getting the direction right when stitching with black threads on black painted canvas is difficult!

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Flat Silk Resources

Shay Pendray's Stitching Toward Perfection

This is a small booklet full of techniques for good embroidery. It is a wonderful resource that explains how to use your laying tool exceptionally well. (The more recent Shay Pendray's Inventive Needlework repeats the laying tool information and is probably easier to find, but note that Stitching Toward Perfection has better information about the use of flat silk.)

Shuji Tamura's Techniques of Japanese Embroidery explains everything you need to know about Japanese emboirdery, from how to lace your frame to how to twist flat silk to make it up for embroidery. Japanese embroiders make up their flat silk into various sizes for various stitches, depending on the technique they want to use. It is a wonderful book for anyone who is curious about this ancient art and is a great reference tool for folks like me who plan to explore some of the techniques.

Since you may not have either book handy, I've found information about flat silk for you to look over. First, Carol Anne's Japanese Embroidery blog has a lovely posting about Japanese flat silk. She shows you the various sizes (twists) of Japanese silk before and after they are stitched.
http://threadsacrosstheweb.blogspot.com/2008/10/one-thread-fits-all.html

Here is a color card of the various flat silks available from the Japanese Embroidery Center in Atlanta.
http://www.jecstore.com/Flat-Silk-OFS.php

You can also order from Australia. Thread Studio has a lovely photo of the various colors available.
http://www.thethreadstudio.com/cathand/kamaito/kamaitotext.htm

Kay Stanis's beautiful website has tips for laying flat silk. Believe me, I studied this very carefully!
http://www.the-gilded-edge.com/laying_flat_silk.html

You can buy flat silk from her, too
http://www.the-gilded-edge.com/buy_supplies.html

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Salt and Miracle Whip and Flat Silk

While I have been finishing the geisha's clothing and stitching her peach, I've also been preparing to start her hair. I deliberately left this until last as I plan to stitch her hair with flat silk to give it the shine a geisha's wig should have. I don't want anything left to stitch that might snag on her wig. If you watched the video I found on the Immortal Geisha site of the man styling the wig, you will have seen the hair is brushed with oil before it is twisted into shape. That helps add a shine to the wig. I think Japanese flat silk will add a similar shine to the wig I'm about to stitch.

You will remember that I laid down a padding base of Soy Silk earlier right across the wig. I also tent stitched the areas between the pink comb in her hair so that I don't have to put flat silk in a small area next to metallic thread that might catch and snag it.

But the main things I've done to prepare to use my flat silk is to pull out my copies of Shay Pendray's Stitching Toward Perfection and Shuji Tamura's Techniques of Japanese Embroidery, and to start preparing my hands. The photo above shows both books, my tube of flat silk from the Japanese Embroidery Center and my Best Laying Tool (or BLT) which is the Americanized version of a tekobari.

We'll talk about the books another time. Right now I want to talk about what I do to smooth my hands when I'm going to handle silk, especially a silk that snags on air like flat silk. Every morning and every evening for the last three days I've been washing my hands and then after I rinse the soap off, I pour 2 teaspoons full of salt into my palm and start rubbing-rubbing-rubbing in all over my fingers and palms, paying special attention to the sides of my thumb and forefinger. If you have cuts or hangnails, the salt will sting but you can use a packet of real sugar instead. (If you've ever been eating at a Seminar and saw folks taking several packets of sugar from the dining room, odds are they are going to smooth their hands for the next day's stitching, not getting sugar for their tea or coffee.) Rinse the salt (or sugar) off, dry your hands, and then apply hand cream. Here are some links to folks talking about what they use. I have not tried the Au Ver a Soie cream but I use both Udderly Smooth and Acid Mantle. The only difference is that I had to special order the Acid Mantle at the drug store and it was more expensive. I've also used Miracle Whip, a plastic squeeze bottle of which I keep in the refrigerator. (I'd highly recommend that you don't let your loved ones catch you absentmindedly rubbing fake mayo into your hands in the kitchen, however!)

Rub everything in well and your hands will be smooth and won't snag the silk badly. Please note that the Japanese Embroidery folks do not use hand cream when they are about to stitch. They simply wash their hands. They feel hand creams don't belong on silks so they would never put any on their silk to tame it like Mary mentions in the link below. I am of two minds about this. I don't worry much about using good conservation techniques but I think I'll keep hand creams well away from my stitching. What you do is up to you!

Hand cream article by Mary Corbet
http://www.needlenthread.com/2007/02/working-with-silk-thread-hand-cream-for.html

Kathy Dyer's recommendations
http://home.comcast.net/~kathydyer/nf_xstitch_tut.html#soft_hands

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

The Geisha's Peach

Last night I stitched the peach The Geisha is studying. It is the central motif of the design and stands for a long life or immortality, depending on your interpretation. It is painted in lovely shades of peach, orange sherbet, pink and rose and is obviously intented to be tent stitched. However, I wanted to do something a bit different that would make the peach stand out more than tent stitches and four shades of silk, so I stitched it in long Interlocking Goblein stitches with one strand of peach Accentuate (#304). Once I finished the Interlocking Goblein, I laid long stitches vertically on top of the peach in the "ditches" between the NP canvas threads. This made the peach more solid but didn't cover much of the lovely shading of the painted canvas. In person the peach gleams but the metallic isn't overpowering. You can also see the shading of the colors through the Accentuate. I did try stitching this with two strands of Accentuate but that hid some of the shading and it also made the peach a little too prominent.

My next step was to stitch the leaf. I used a beautiful green silk perle from Au Ver a Soie called Soie Gobelins (#225). (My spool is older and has the Kreinik label because Kreinik did distribute the thread at one time.) It is a very thin perle thread, probably #12 or even smaller in size, and when I used packed stem stitch, it looks both delicate and like a freshly picked leaf.

I probably will cut a small piece of gold lame and sew it in place underneath the peach so that it has an extra gold gleam, but I'll decide that when I finish the piece. It will take some planning as there is open background stitch nearby that I won't want the gold fabric to peek through. We'll see....

Perhaps The Geisha is just looking at the peach to see if it's really ripe but her contemplative face tells me she is thinking about something more important than dessert. I hope I managed to stitch the peach well enough that it is worthy of her interest!

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow