How To Attach Silk To Wooden Frame With Safety Pins for Silk Painting

How To Attach Silk To Wooden Frame With Safety Pins

Above: a white 3-prong claw and a safety pin are both stretching the silk to the frame.

There are several ways to attach silk to wooden frames, and the Chinese Suspension Claws (also known as 3-prong claws or hoos) are terrific – but they’re hard to find and they are around $US1.00 each.

Over the years I’ve used these claws as well as push-pins, and back then I came up with another solution — why not use safety pins?

They’re inexpensive, readily available close by to everyone, and work great 🙂

My technique:

I attach a thin ribbon to the “head” of the safety pin (as shown in the image above
I push the sharp end of the pin through the silk
the middle of the safety pin rests against the silk
I stretch the ribbon out to the wooden (or other) frame, and push in a push-pin
as the silk gets heavy with dye, I can continue to stretch the ribbon out a bit further to keep the silk taut and tight.

Let me know if you try this for yourself – I’d love to hear from you!