Five things I learned about working with silk ties
Working on this necktie quilt with Amanda Nadig gave us a long hours to observe the qualities of silk. Here are my top five takeaways:
Embrace the slinkiness of silk: The first response I get when I tell people I’m working with silk is generally a grimace. Many of us may have tried to work with silk in the past and found the shiftiness difficult to work with. It definitely can be! But that shiftiness is also an invitation to cede a little control in the creative process and let the material take one of the reins. (Don’t worry, quilty charioteers, we can still hold the other rein). The fact that silk can be hard to pin down can be viewed as an asset by anyone looking into incorporate some authentic imperfections to their work.
Use the bias of ties in your favor: Neckties are cut on a bias to provide tension that keeps the knot in place. We can use that to our advantage! Fabric cut on the bias (cut on a diagonal to the grain) is way friendlier to curves. This is a great chance to incorporate new shapes into our compositions.
The color of silk fabric is deeply radiant: Not all fabric holds color the same way. Silk, with its luster, holds color much more deeply than the cottons I’m used to working with. Seeing this necktie quilt in the daylight was a spectacular moment. When I was photographing this quilt in front o my apartment building, nearly everyone that walked by was caught by surprise and commented on the quilt. This doesn’t usually happen in New York City.
You can salvage the long thread in a necktie: There’s a wonderful piece of thread that that you can salvage when you’re deconstructing a tie. You’ll see a tack stitch on either end of the tie, a few inches up from the tip. Snip those and you can pull that long thread out with a very satisfying tug. It’s often a very strong polyester thread that can be wound around a bobbin or square of cardboard and kept for later. It reminds me of salvaging the chain-stitched thread from the waist of a pair of jeans! You can read more about that in the zine I wrote with Eliu Hernandez here.
Keep the interlining of your ties! The batting of ties is called the interlining (I just looked that up lol). Amanda and I just called it the batting the whole time. Interlinings, especially of good quality ties, is often made from wool, which makes wonderful batting for tiny quilts and quilty ornaments.