When someone asks me how my silk scarves remain so bright and washable, I tell them it’s in the steaming process! I use French silk dyes to paint my silk and they need to be steamed to achieve their color intensity and washability. The high temperature heat and pressure produced by steaming bonds dye and silk molecules together.
Once I’m finished painting the silk, I then roll each piece onto newsprint, usually not more than 10-12 scarves (depending on the length of each one). I fill my horizontal steamer with water and put the rolled packet inside. Usually steaming takes between 2-3 hours depending again on how many scarves. When that is finished I rinse the scarves to get all the excess dye out and then soak for a short time in a dye suspension detergent. This allows me to put all the scarves into one bucket without all the dye colors going onto the scarves.
After this is done I rinse and iron them……. there is also another option to ‘set’ the colors which is just soaking them in a dye fixative solution, rinsing and ironing. MUCH shorter but the colors will never obtain that intense brightness! That method is good however if one doesn’t have a steamer or is in a big time crunch and is fine with more muted colors!
It’s definitely a labor of love for me!