Super Silk Fiber!

The blue stitching above was done with the Rainbow Gallery
Splendor Silk mixed with strands of Glissen Gloss.

Here are the fabulous fibers themselves!

This is one of my very favorite fibers. It is silk AND is hand washable. You get a lot for your money, it comes in soooo many beautiful colors and stitches up like a dream. It is Rainbow Gallery's Splendor.

Splendor is 100% silk and comes in 360 colors in 8 yard cards. It is a 12 ply silk that has three 4 ply bundles twisted together. I can't stress enough how gorgeous the colors are and how sweet this fiber is to work with. I want to use this fiber as much as possible because it is so GREAT! This is the fiber that I am using as the water on "Ladybug Lake" and it was an ideal choice to do it. The color is spot on for what I needed. Rainbow Gallery also makes a lot of other great fibers too, I have used their Wisper to great effect. Check them all out here:
http://www.rainbowgallery.com/

Keep I mind that they suggest you test your fiber for colorfastness before using just to be on the safe side.

I was going to test the Jacquard Lumier's and Shiva Paintsticks for color fastness but instead was busy clearing my work table of all the items I had out testing the Twinkling H2O's, Derwent Inktense Color Pencils and the Gelatos. The test results were wonderful as far as finding out what works well and what doesn't. The Derwent and Gelatos truly had it all going on perfectly in the color fastness test and maintained a very soft hand. As much as I love the effects of the Twinkling H2O's, they definitely didn't perform well on the fabric. The fabric was hard as nails and the colors ran whenever water was applied, no matter the prep work. Two things to remember: always wash the fabric to make sure any sizing or any other additive is removed and heat set with an iron. If the colors are unstable at all, heat press again. You can't just quickly go over it too, really make sure you have set it well.

I started working on my stitch sampler and should have the first example of that next week. YEAH! I'm so anxious to get started on that! Not every super cool fiber works on the 14 count Aida and I am going to show some of them next week. Remember I mentioned the project that failed because of the paint? I will show that to you as well next week. So get ready for more fun then!

Thought Nugget:
"Where the spirit does not work with the hand there is no art."
~Leonardo da Vinci