ENTWINEMENTS

Someone lost all of her resists. By this I mean that she made the resists, dyed the cloth and opened it up and it was all black, no undyed areas. She blamed it on the lightweght silk. Here's my take:

No, the problem is not the the silk but the technique!

I use the lightest china silk everyday.

Did you soak the silk in water before you dyed it? If not the dry silk will wick the dye under the resists. This is by far the most common step to neglect. Wetting out your goods before dyeing is a standard procedure.

Loose resists also do not work very well. Shibori creates the resists areas by compression; this means that the the resists must be tight enough to compress the cloth. With lightweight or porous silk this can require extra care, especially with stitched resists. For stitched resists in the lightweight or porous fabrics:
-stitch all the lines with a strong double thread
-gather each line
-spray the cloth with water to dampen; the damp cloth will now compress 30-50% more than the dry cloth
-gather as tight as possible and tie-off
-soak in water to wet out throughly
-dye

If you want to discharge scarves with resists you must pay attention to all of the above steps. The discharge reagents will penetrate even farther than the dyes do; this means that it is even harder to create resists for discharge than for dye.

I must add that not all techniques will work with all fabrics; this is where sampling comes in. For example short lines (<3") of stitched shibori in silk chiffon have never worked for me. There simply isn't enough cloth to compress itself . But the same design in a silk broadcloth, a much denser cloth, works.