Thursday, June 5, 2014

Tissue Paper Dyed Silk Pillow

Here we decided to revisit our success as dying silk with tissue paper but this time use the technique to make a pillow. This is a super easy & quick no mess project that you can do on your own or with your little one.





I prepared a fabric pad to put our tissue paper on.  The pad is made up of:
18.5" x 18.5" square of cotton (this will be on the inside of the cushion so it doesn't matter what it looks like
18.5" x 18.5" square of batting (I used a scrap piece of wool batting for this project)
18.5" x 18.5" square of white cotton
18.5" x 18.5" square of silk (I took this from one of our silk scarfs we get from Dharma Trading)

Once the pillow is finished it will fit a 18" insert.

I kept all the layers together by running a zigzag stitch around the outside


I prepared a spray bottle with 1 part water & 1 part vinegar and cut up some strips of tissue paper.


We sprayed the pad to make it wet.


Bunny #1 laid down strips of tissue paper - any which way.



A little bit more spraying?


Once she had had enough of spraying & laying down the strips we put cling film over the top to stop it drying out & left it for a little while (couple of hours.)



The tissue paper made very vibrant colors on the silk & there was some interesting texture.After I had removed all the tissue paper I put the cushion top through the wash - cold wash and dried in the tumble dryer.


I tend to make pillowcase enclosure pillows as I am terrified of zips and I love a bit of ribbon. We also added some orange piping to the pillow to give it a bit of a zing.

3 comments:

Thimbleanna said...

What a fun project! I would never have thought tissue paper would run like that -- very clever!

Kathleen said...

What a neat project! Is this a permanent dye on the silk or does it begin to wash away?

Anonymous said...

Love it!