Silk Banner Residency-Day 5

The fifth and last day of the residency, we removed the banners from their frames. Mrs. Newell cut the small, accent banners away from the larger ones. 

Only about 90% of the dye adheres to the silk, which means that the remaining 10% needs to be rinsed out in order to keep it from ruining the banners if they ever were to get wet in the future.  When rinsing out the banners, it was important to keep them under cold, running water until all of the extra dye was out. If we stopped in the middle of this process, the colors could  become trapped in areas that we didn’t want them to go.

Though it may seem like we didn’t have a lot left to do on the last day, the students stayed busy helping rinse out the banners, dry them by slowly fanning them, and taking apart the stretcher frames.

 As we took turns completing these activities, Mrs. Newell recapped the process and vocabulary that went along with producing this type of art. We even learned about the process of how silk is made. Many students were surprised, and sometimes a little grossed out, to find that silk comes from a worm! Here is a time lapse video of a silk worm spinning it's silk cocoon.

 

Mrs. Robertshaw rinsing out one of the banners.

A big THANK YOU!!!!! goes out to our wonderful parent volunteers that came in to help during the residency! It was a joy to work with all of you! We couldn't have done it without you! 

 

If you are interested in creating silk banners at home, Mrs. Newell recommended the following website for purchasing kits to get you started. 

Dharmatrading.com

Slowly fanning the banners to help dry them.