I started this past week with the revolution that all of the techniques used to make silk flowers are, in fact, the techniques of Passementerie. This was kind of a huge breakthrough thought for me. So while the flowers were not made in the Passementerie guild halls by guild members, they were made using the same techniques and materials. This discovery sent me to the library to find lots of books about the art form know as Passementerie.

And good luck with that one! The Passementers are an incredibly secretive lot. They don’t write books or extol the virtues of their art form. But it is still an art form and is practiced to this day which in some odd way is helpful because it means there are people out there who know the correct way to do this stuff. (I’m all good if you were wondering.) So in looking for the history of Passementerie I had to broaden my search to include the whole history of guilds in Belgium, Germany, and France. I put together a list of possibly useful books and will order them next week.

I finished all of the little white flowers that I wanted to make (8) and I’m hoping it will be enough. I used a recent car trip to get them all cut out. I also have two lilies cut from the sheep parchment but I’m trying to be disciplined and finishing the two orange lilies that had to wait because I ran out of floss. I have two petals left to wrap, four to do the wire decoration on and two centers to make, then I can shelf those. The sheep parchment will be with a different orange which is lighter and brighter than the other two.

Which brings me to why this one is taking so long to wrap – I’m using a spun silk, seven strand but using a single strand that I’m untwisting as I wrap! What a pain in the arse. The result looks very nice and very closely resembles the filament silk but the time involved is extreme. I’m hoping that when I get back to the filament silk things will speed up considerably.

I think I will then have to start concentrating on the greenery. I will need a good bit of greenery for this to look right and I’m a bit behind in the greenery department. The best thing about greenery is that the leaves only need to be the same shape – matching the sizes of them is not going to be the time killer.

I pulled out some of my books on basket-weaving as well so that I could get some ideas for my fence. It’s not going to be an epic fence but I did want something that is more in keeping with the nature of my shrine and so just cutting the tops off or using decorative pins as the posts just isn’t a look I like. I could of course use popsicle sticks to make the fence (because I swear that’s what one example I have is made of) but, again, not the look I’m going for. Some of my examples are very decorative but not examples that feel right for my shrine. At least now that I have some solid ideas I can play with them in my head for some time before I start work on them. Projects always go better if I can mull over all the details in my head before I start working on them – pre-trouble-shooting as it were.

At this point I have exactly two months before I need to have it completed. I have a long, long way to go in those two months and I’m really hoping I didn’t bight off more than I can chew with this project.

I am very grateful to the folks at Pergamena for working with me to understand what the differences really are and labeling all my samples for me.

I have five different packets of parchment that are a mix of four different hides and three different finishes. The finishes are listed as manuscript, calligraphy, and natural to denote if they are processed on one side or both, or not at all.

My packets contained:

Natural Deer – Which very much reminds me of the rawhide I give the dog. It is too thick for making petals and does not take a needle at all, even when wet. However, once I got it wet, I rolled it tightly in silk and when it’s dry I should be able to use it for “tree branches” in the shrine.

Natural Sheep – The one I most prefer as it is soft and easy to cut and takes a needle even when it’s dry. It holds onto the silk very nicely and makes me wish I had gotten some earlier in the project.

Calligraphy Goat – There’s a lot of variation in this packet and it is possible that there are some natural pieces in here. Some of them are as soft and pliable as the natural sheep.

Calligraphy Calf – For calligraphy I would probably prefer this one. I haven’t tested the silk with it yet.

Manuscript Sheep – Much thinner that the natural sheep and some of the pieces are just as soft as the natural but not as “flannel-like” which is probably great for books but not so great for silk. I have not tried it yet but it should work fine because it resembles (in feel) a lot of the pieces I was working with before getting the sample packets.

What makes a good parchment for this purpose? “Flannel-like” feel to one side that could be used as a lint brush in a pinch. If it can pick up lint then it will hold silk as well. A rougher texture to the front side will help as well. As I understand it is common to use cardboard (the lightweight stuff they put in dress shirts or the stuff known as cardstock) for modern projects and I can understand how that might work. I am pretty sure that the parchment would work better – or give you the same results but be much easier to work with. Parchment has about the same weight as cardstock.

I was also able to get an additional two types of silk to work with and a whole bunch of some of the other silks I had already tested in different colors. I have a new supply of orange so I can finish making the lilies that I started a couple of weeks ago. And I have discovered that the roses are so very much easier to make on the natural sheep parchment – they look nicer and are easier to wrap. I was under the impression that wrapping uphill is easy and downhill was a drag and was just about to modify my wrapping technique to accommodate this discovery but when I switched to the natural sheep it became far less of a problem. It does answer my question about the particolored flowers though – if it is easier to wrap going uphill (by which I mean that the wrapping surface gets bigger with every twist) then I suspect the particolored flowers were wrapped from both ends and there might be evidence of this on the backside of the flowers.

The most time consuming part is now the wrapping of the silk over wire. There is a tool for this purpose that I have seen in action. I could make a tool myself because it would be useful but I’m going to save that project for when I get to the woodworking portion of the overall project. I’ve been doing well with doing it by hand thus far and I haven’t entirely worked out the logistics of making my own tool. The coiling of wire (using my rather stiff and very long doll needle) is pretty easy. I have also wrapped the wire with the silk (like ganutel) and then put an extra wrap of silk over the top which is easier to do but seems rather wasteful of the silk. I will continue to experiment.