Has anyone ever tried to cut a regular size silk to make a diamond cut silk? If so do you care to share any tips etc? Thanks

Are suggesting that you are going to buy a $10 silk and cut it down, when you buy a diamond cut silk for $4.00.

You would have better luck making a diagonal silk, just cut on the bias and it will not run.

Ask any seamstress, silk is very hard to work with, and making French hems is next to impossible.

Thanks for the help. I would rather buy a diamond cut silk but the color I am wanting is not offered.

What color are you looking for?

I've done it myself and it's no fun. I has leftover yardage from another project. It was about 12 x 36 inches and it was easy to draw out a diamond shape from this piece.
'however, rolling a hem on fabric that thin, combined with the fact that it is essentially a bias cut, made for maddening work. It did work and for the routine I was using it for it was essential. But I'm glsd that silk lasted for all the years I did the routine...because I dreaded making another!

Very much agreed. I recently learned the hard way that trying to put a hem on a cut edge on a silk is a fool's errand. The silk threads simply pull apart. I won't do THAT again.

Thanks for all of the help.

Good diamond cut silks are definitely more expensive than the equivalent square silk. Yes, you can get what importers call 75 cent silk but they are junk. Silk is measured by the hemmed edge, never diagonally. There is a chart at the top of this topic in "Smooth as Silk" to give you the measurements. All 4 edges of a good diamond cut silk are exactly the same size. It should hang like a real square silk held by the corner. Cheap ones hang like a bath mat!

Normal hems are not useful on true diamond cut silks. You'll be better off with serger hems (like a bath cloth) It is an inferior hem compared to the best 2mm hems on the good square silks.

By all means see http://www.themagiccafe.com/forums/viewt......forum=54

It should correct many of the myths about diamond cut silks.

As the magicians' silk importer, diamond cut silks required a lot of trial and error to get to the good ones. Shop wisely!

Buy from Bob.Its the
best route you can take.
Todd

Before the advent of "diamond cut silks," I used diagonal cut silks that I made myself. Eventually I took some 18-inch silks to a tailor to have them cut diagonally and then hemmed along the "hypotenuse" of the diamond silk. Surprisingly, the tailor did a decent job. The silks I use in this video:
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=453......&theater
are all diagonal cut silks. The diagonal cut silks were also better for my routine because of the way the silks appear magically at my fingertips. Finally, a diagonal cut silk also makes the Walsh appearing cane in that video appear faster than a full 18-inch silk would.

I know diamond cut silks seem to be the preferred style, but this is again one of those things that I feel magicians obsess over and that the lay public could care less about. I've always thought that diamond cut silks look like--well, diamonds--or maybe kites.

Also, since I did Phoa's "Cut and Restored Silk" now and then, I had a few diagonal silks lying around that could enjoy a second life for a 20th century silks routine.

----- Sonny
Okay, there I go again using a four-syllable word and showing off my knowledge of Euclidean geometry. (And that's what the acorn said when it grew up! "Gee, Ah'm a tree!")