Making soy silk papers, and other fiber papers

This past weekend I made a lot of dyed soy silk and wool roving. I also have dyed nylon, bamboo, and tencel fibers in my stash that I had previously dyed. I wanted to try my hand at making soy silk papers.  I wanted to make wispy light soy silk papers. I also wanted to see if I could make wool roving papers that looked wet felted. I love how they all turned out.

Here is the start of the wool roving paper, the bottom layer was mostly soy silk.

Then I added wool roving, curly wool, nylon, and angelina fibers on top.

This is my try at wispy soy silk paper. It has some bamboo, tencel, silk, and angelina fibers as well.

I didn't take pictures of the other two pieces with the fibers laid out.

There is a towel and clear plastic protecting my table top.  The fibers are laid out on fine tulle and then another piece of tulle is placed on top. I then used a paint brush to apply hot soapy water (1/4 to 1/2 tsp hand dish washing detergent to 2 cups) to the fibers.  I don't want them swimming in water, I just want the fibers to be wet. Once the front looks good, I flip it over and do the back. (My instructions said wait 2 to 4 hours to make sure the fibers are saturated, but I don't think that is necessary. I did wait a bit, then continued). It seems most of the instructions I saw used Jo Sonja's Textile Medium, which I didn't have on hand. I used Golden's GAC 900 Textile medium.  I applied it with a brush, just on one side per the instructions I was using.  It worked really well. I think next time I will blot the fibers with a towel to remove some of the excess water first. Also, I think I would apply the medium to both sides, especially on the wool one.  I took them outside and hung them on a clothesline to dry (Put them in a plastic tub or similar to carry them outside, as mine were very drippy). Hopefully my shrubs and grass by the clothesline don't mine a coat of textile medium!  Once dry, I take the tulle off.  I need to iron all of them, but here are pictures of them un-ironed.

I didn't take a picture of laying out the fibers on this one.  This is all real silk, laid out in two layers and is very solid. I wanted to have a "control sample" of fiber paper made exactly per the instructions, but wish I would have made it wispy.

Somewhat wispy, this is miscellaneous fibers (bamboo, tencel, soy silk). The purply rectangular bits at the bottom are silk throwster's waste that I bought pre-dyed from Wild Heathers (I bought it at a fabric convention, but I'm sure they have a website, and they also have a store now near the Denver Art Museum).

This is the piece that I did show the fiber layout above.  This is some silk, tencel, bamboo, and soy silk. I love the wispy open look of this (although the colors don't blend as well as I hoped).

This is the wool/ soy silk piece. I really like both sides so I think I will play with this some more.

Wool Side:

Soy Silk Side:

I plan to try to make wool paper that looks like my wet felted landscapes. This is a much quicker and easier way to create a felted looking piece.  The wool piece isn't completely glued through, it seems like I could pull it apart into two layers (which could be interesting in itself), so I am going to wet it and apply textile medium again to hopefully create a better bond.