Handpainting Silk Yarn

Hand-Painted Silk Yarn: Here’s What Happens

When it’s time to replenish our handpainted silk yarn offering, we plan a 3-day getaway to our island dye studio. It’s an idyllic waterfront work environment on a beautiful island a few hours from Vancouver on the West Coast of Canada.

OK, now you have absolutely no sympathy for how hard we’re about to work for 3 days….

 

Before we go, we prepare the yarns. Skeins are wound either to pair later with solids for our knit kits, or as individual skeins for our customers to work into their own creative gems.

We begin to plan the colourways. We’re inspired by many things: art, nature, and the world around us. Each time we handpaint yarns, we create new and original colourways; never the same twice.

Once we’re in the dye studio, we soak the yarns to prepare them to accept the dyes. Individual colours are created to achieve the colourways we’ve designed. The colours are tested and tweaked until we’re satisfied that we’ve got what we want. Each colourway has at least 4 colours that are carefully applied and blended on the individual skeins.  It’s a time-consuming process, but very inspiring.

 

The skeins are given time to absorb the dyes and fix the colours. Then we gently wash and rinse them. If we’re lucky, the sun shines on us and the skeins are hung outside in the island sun to dry.

Once we’ve completed the handpainting process we dye solid colours to accompany them in the knit kits. And so marks the completion of another wonderful handpainting session.

Because they’re unique and of such limited production, these lovely handpainted yarns are only available for in-person shopping at the Silk Weaving Studio – Sorry, no online sales for these lovelies. Please come and visit us on Granville Island in Vancouver to see them.