Margilan Silk Gauze Failure

[Frances]

I purchased Margilan Silk Gauze to use to make a wrap. The fabric is beautiful and I thought it would felt rather easily. Much to my dismay I have had very poor results. My design was to add swirls, squiggles, etc. in spring colors to the silk. I used merino roving that I wet and formed into the desired shape and placed in on the silk. After all the designs were placed, covered it with netting and wet with soapy water and started rubbing first with my hands and then with bubble wrap and then with a bag of marbles. Even with the netting the designs did not stay in place and my vigorous rubbing almost made holes in the fabric. I rubbed for hours and the roving in most places is barely hanging on. The water was room temp – not hot nor cold.


Does anyone have any ideas on what I did wrong? Or better yet how to felt on this fabric.


This was a huge disappointment – it took several hours – one afternoon to lay it out and then another day trying to get it to felt.


This close up photo shows how the rubbing made holes.





This is what it looks like – very pretty but not stable enough to use.

[Pandagirl]

It is very pretty. I'm sorry you had such a hard time. I've never used this type of silk. My suggestion would be to add some roving on the opposite side and try rubbing from that side with very soapy water.This way the roving would have some thing to attach to. Or perhaps try needle felting one of the swirls then rubbing to see if that helps. Good luck!

Is it possible this product was mislabeled? It sounds like it's acting like something other than silk.

[halay]

Frances, sorry to hear about your bad experience with margelan. There are two types of margelan: one (which I think you were using) is losely wowen and is used as a lining. After heavy rolling, the holes become bigger. The other type is more dense and is used fo scarves.
I have been using both types quite a lot without any problem. After reading your desccription of the process I would do things different: I would never wet wool first before placing it on top of silk and always use almost cold water at the begining. I use a sander first just for a second and then roll and roll. Here you can see a scarf I made from the first type of margelan (I think you can see the holes are big) www.ipernity.com/doc/724735/40324442/in/album/842148 and here is a scarf made of denser margelan www.ipernity.com/doc/724735/40324486/in/album/842148. Both scarves were felted in no time. Don't give up, next time will be better. I would follow Marilyn's advice and put some roving on the opposite side.

[lyn]

Frances - such a shame - the layout and colours are lovely! I hope you manage to rescue it.

Nada - lovely scarves!

[Shepherdess]

Always disappointing when things don't go as planed. Francis the wool doesn't look felted to me are you sure you have got some superwash without knowing it? Was the wool trying to sticking to the netting? I usually rub from the silk side and I to d not wet my wool first. I always have a hard time getting it to stick even to the wool when I do that.

[Frances]

Thanks ladies - I am going to try again without wetting the wool first and rubbing from the silk side and see what happens. Hopefully I can pull the roving off and toss it and salvage the piece of silk. The wool came from Opulent Fibers and I have never experienced problems with their roving.before. Is there a way to tell if wool is super wash. I will let it sit for a few days and then go back to it.

[Shepherdess]

Try felting it by its self to see if it works. the stuff I had wouldn't felt ad moved around when other wools didn't. It felt strange to me. but I am one of those strange people that doesn't like the feel of wet alpaca, somehow slimy feeling to me.

[Pandagirl]

Frances, I'd try making a sample with roving by itself. If it came from Opulent, I doubt it's super wash, but you never know. If the sample doesn't felt well then you know it's not the silk.

[MTRuth]

You've gotten good suggestions here. I look forward to hearing if you can solve the problem.

[koffipot]

It's so disappointing when things go wrong, especially when you waste a nice piece of silk.

I hope your salvage operation works.

[chookie2]

Good luck Frances, Lovely concept for your scarf,sorry it didn't work- take heart that we learn from mistakes.

Looking forward to hearing of your success. I too had a scarf do similar and it too only had wool one one side so I will revisit that while you do yours. LOL

[dottyhen]

Good luck with sorting it, Frances. I had a similar thing happen too, when trying a similar design on very loosely woven cheesecloth. I didn't wet the wool beforehand and started with cold water but the circles didn't all "stick." I had wondered if the looseness of the weave made a difference, or if I was making the circles of fibres too thick so that they just sat on the surface of the cotton. The cheesecloth had worked fine with just a very fine layer of fibres all over it so I was disappointed. I need to try again but it takes me at least a day or so to recover from disappointment to feel suitably motivated again!
I look forward to hearing how you got on.