Question from Nancy: Hi Teena. I am interested in help getting Elmers glue out of my silk that I used as resist. I thought I was onto an inexpensive and easily available solution to resist, but I’m having a very hard time getting it out. Any words of advise?
Answer:
Hi there Nancy! Bravo on having a go with silk painting, woohoo!
Was it just price which made you think that Elmer’s Glue would be a good “resist” in the ancient art of silk painting?
I don’t live in the USA any more, but in all my years there I never tried children’s glue on my silk 🙂
It’s great to experiment, but as for the best way to remove it, I am not sure how you should proceed.
I too love to experiment, and I always teach my Students to:
- try NEW IDEAS on SMALL PIECES OF SILK
- that way they can work out how best to proceed without using up a lot of silk — or dye.
Many silk artists have been painting on silk for many, many years, and before using something unusual, I always feel it’s a quick and easy task to check the internet to see if anyone has had any success with my “idea”.
I found one comment about Elmer’s glue: “It is almost always more difficult to wash anything out of silk than out of cotton, because silk is made of a more complex molecule that can bond to more types of other materials.”
Water-soluble outliners / resists are much safer than the solvent-based Gutta, and they are perfectly suitable for dye painting. I stopped using the solvent-based Gutta years ago when I discovered it’s extremely harmful effects on health.
Jacquard’s water-based Gutta works very well. You can find it online on this link:
Resistad is also a fantastic water-based outliner (which is now being manufactured byJacquard), and can be purchased online.
