juliasb

I have this beautiful piece of red printed silk that is a bit over 50 years old. My uncle bought it back from Vietnam in the late 60's. I have kept it sealed in an air tight seal a meal bag for more than 40 years. I have taken it out a few times and put it in a new bag and sealed again only because I wanted to touch it. I have also kept in in a dark place to preserve the colors. I have taken better care of this piece of fabric than any other fabric I have ever had.
Now I would like to use it before it out lives me! I have never made any kind of quilts using silk. Would, or should all the fabrics be of like content? Do I need to treat is more special while sewing with it. Or should I just forget about using the majority of it and only use a small amount and put it in a crazy quilt or something like that. I am sure I could come up with some sort of design to set it off with when I put my mind to it.
I think one of my bigger fears is putting scissors to it.

ckcowl

Use a lightweight fusible interfacing/ stabilizer on it- silk frays like crazy. It also is slippery the interfacing will make cutting and sewing much easier. My uncle brought my mom home 10 yards of red Vietnamese silk back in the 60s too. Beautiful fabric! Mom made a robe and pillows with hers. What was left over was used for appliqué in a quilt. Stabilizing is very important.

cashs_mom

I agree with ck about the interfacing. I used to do a lot of garment sewing. Silk is beautiful, but the slippery kinds like china silk and charmeuse are very hard to work with and do fray like crazy. Also keep in mind that the silk may or may not wash well. If you are using it in a quilt this could be very important. I have mixed silk with cotton without any problems except the normal ones when dealing with two very different fabrics.

juliasb

Thank you I will definitely be taking this to heart when I begin to use this silk.

carol45

Someone gave me a gorgeous piece of silk that I made the following out of. I used solid silk as well. Interfaced, as everyone has said. I made 2 of the table runners--one for my daughter-in-law, and one for me (because my husband liked it so much). The one for the t-set was also for my DIL.

mjkgquilt

Beautiful! Thank you for sharing photos.