Battle of the Blocks

Today I finally completed painting one of the most stubborn pieces of silk habotai I've encountered this far.  Once I had my pre-hand rolled scarf all stretched out and all the geometric resist lines drawn in, I was very excited to color it up!

The minute my brush hit the silk, I knew something was wrong.  Instead of the paint flowing beautifully across the silk and filling each enclosed motif area, it just sat there, in a little puddle and refused to budge.  The nerve!  I tried using more paint, but the same thing occurred.  I couldn't bear the thought of spending 8+ hours trying to fill in all the white, so I went ahead and painted the background as well as I could, then the motifs.  The paint continued to puddle, and even created these circular areas that simply pushed the paint up and away, so I just used thinner coatings.

Once it was all painted, the white rough edges stuck out like a sore thumb, so I mixed a color just slightly darker than the original light purple ground, and painted outlines of each shape. Then I mixed some different purples and reds and painted in overlapping geometric lines that mimicked the original motifs.  

As the outlines were drying, I actually noticed the resist outlines cracking now!  I wonder how this is going to turn out in the end? Of all things, puddling paint, dark outline edges, and now crackling resist- what next?!

Well, of course, OTHER than a few more newly acquired grey hairs from this experience. *whew*

Here is the final outlook - all stretched out.  I'm so disappointed and frustrated because it looks NOTHING like the original design I had in my head.. even my colors became dark, muted and subdued.  From now on, I am going to need to wash all the silk BEFORE I begin to avoid this problem again!  Alas, I have fully learned my lesson now.. We shall see once this piece is heat set, washed, and ironed, how it will really turn out.  Who knows, maybe it was salvaged?  But personally, it would be fine by me if I never had to look at it again!