Silk Carrier Rods

I went to my first ever Textile colour and stitch workshop yesterday and loved it.
I like discovering new technics especially if it involves using a waste product. These are silk Carrier Rods a 'woven waste' product of the silk winding process. They look like dried up leaves in their raw state so firstly we had to unfurl them and then dip in acrylic paint and leave to dry out. As this takes a day we were allowed to choose some already done. Second process is to carefully peal the layers apart. Each rod will give you about 3-4 paper thin layers of silk which we then
painted with a different colour mixed with Iridescent tinting medium. This gives a sheen in places. Once we had our layers we chose a colour corordinated material as the backing.
The idea is to stitch all the layers randomly using
the fancy stitches on your sewing machine and to
then overstitch by hand using different thickness
and types of embriodery thread using Cretan
stitch. I have only ever used this stitch for making solid leaves so using it to get a basket
weave effect was different. Now for the fun part
making it into something. The tutor had all hers blocked as pictures but I like making items that I can use. I have a month till the next workshop to produce my idea. Iv'e got no Mojo lurking in the cupboard but her friend Flo is about so I will just go with her. Keep watching this space to see what we come up with.