Description
Multicolour silk hankies are a lot of fun because, depending on how you plan on using them, they will yield very different results. You can have a nuno felted piece with very delineated colour blocks or you can have a multicolour silk thread ready for spinning or knitting.
I’ve dyed this silk hankie in purple, two tones of blue and an apple green. I divided the silk hankie into four quadrants and each was dyed one colour. If you prepare it for spinning, this means you’ll get a self-striping silk yarn!
There’s a total of 10.1g of silk hankies for you to play with in this stack. I’ve kept them small to make it more affordable also and easier to sample if you’ve not yet tried this little mulberry silk wonder.
What are Mawata silk hankies?
Silk hankies are degummed silk worm’s cocoons that have been stretched into a square shape. They consist of multiple, very thin layers, each harvested from a single cocoon.
Mawata is their original Japanese name, and it means “to spread around.”
Silk takes up colour like nothing else, so the saturation will work great to bring your spinning or wet felting projects to the next level. Silk hankies are quite shiny so they definitely won’t go unnoticed.
How can I use a silk hankie?
- Find a corner of the hankie and peel off a layer. Each layer is very thin and cobweb-like. Moisturise your hands before so the silk doesn’t get stuck to your fingers!
- For spinning or knitting: make a hole in the centre with your fingers and draft the fibres apart until you reach the thickness you’d like to work with (watch the video below). Break off one end so you’ll have a roving of sorts, then carefully wrap it around your hand to form a nest. The silk is now ready for spinning or knitting as you would any yarn. Spinning silk hankies can be a little intimidating at first, but the end results are stunning, so do give it a go.
- For wet felting (nuno felting): add one or more thin layers to your other fibres for a cobweb effect. The silk will gradually embed with the rest as you felt.
Please note that the last picture shows a stack of several colourways of silk hankies. This listing is only for one of them.
