Silk Purse/Sow's Ear

A while ago I mentioned that I had left a silk purse in a dye bath for way longer than recommended. I played with it for a week or so. Not sure if the product is great or not but it has been fun to try a bunch of techniques. I do not have a picture of how it started but the purse was at the Heartway International booth at the Houston International Quilt Festival. Here is a picture of the bag in black. I started with a cream purse so you will need to use your imagination a little see how it all started. All in all I dyed it, over dyed it, stamped it with bugs, silk screened some leaves, wrote on it, glittered it and drew on it. After heat setting it and washing it, this is how it turned out:



SIDE ONE



SIDE TWO

Side two had most of the embellishments on it and, as you can see, most of them washed off/out of the fabric. I have used this bag quite a bit in the last month or so and it is a very usable purse. One large inside zippered pocked and three other interior pockets (two with elastic) make this a wonderful hand bag. It also has a secret packet in the bottom of the bag to hold things you would rather hot have exposed when the bag is open. I had originally purchased this bag to try out some machine embroidery and the secret pocket was supposed to facilitate that use. I couldn't figure put how to get it hooped correctly for embroidering. I might just add some later on but I don't think it really needs any more embellishing time.