https://www.cutoutandkeep.net/projects/wedding-dress-painting • Posted by Katherine Munro
I was asked to paint a wedding dress which turned out quite well so I thought I'd show how I did it on this website. First of all, the dress was taken apart in panels which had an irregular shape. This would be difficult to stretch on a frame so I decided to use the freezer paper method. What you do is iron the silk onto the freezer paper (which can be found in most supermarkets along with the Glad plastic wrap and wax paper. It is not wax paper though and please don't use that!) to stabilize it. Then you can paint on it without having to worry about it shifting (or so they say!) I tried a small test piece beforehand:
The test piece looked great and the freezer paper idea seemed to work fine so I went ahead and began the actual dress. The actual pieces were much larger than the test piece but with a bit of patience it seemed to be fine. when you are ironing silk onto freezer paper keep the iron moving, use a fairly high setting and test it by pulling on it as you go along to make sure that it's sticking.
You can use a piece of organza or other light fabric to protect your iron and the silk in case it gets too hot and melts through:
After carefully mixing the shades of blue that we agreed on I began the painting. I decided to use Dharma Tradings Pigment Dyes which are great because they don't require any steaming. You can just heat fix if you want with an iron but even that's not necessary. Just let dry for 24 hourse and you're done! These dyes are surprisingly bright and very concentrated.
I began by spraying the silk with water beforehand because I wanted a very soft flowing feel to the painting. By wetting it first the dyes tend to spread more and you can have a subtle gradation of colors. When I did that the freezer paper began to buckle underneath the silk! EEK! I was worried because I really wanted the freezer paper to stabilize the silk. After applying the dye and the water it looked something like this:
As it turned out it didn't seem to matter much that the paper buckled. The dye flowed around and in and out of the ripples and created a nice effect just as I wanted it to:
I let it dry and my client had her tailor put the dress back together and voila! It really worked out beautifully! Please don't hesitate to ask any questions about this method and if you have dress or any other silk that you need dyed or painted let me know.