More on Mazes

I finished the 'answer key' for the large maze that I am going to weave. I wanted to have a small piece that would show the actual route through the maze since the larger one will only show the beginning of the route and perhaps the finish. As you can see, the actual route is not a simple path....it wanders all around the piece before ending up at the exit at the bottom.

Weaving this sample is a good test of the pattern to ensure I don't have any errors and ensure the overall balance is good. I did find a couple of small items that I may modify. But looks like the larger piece will be a go...of course I need to re-design it for size. It will be about 10 times larger when finished than this sample which of course necessitates a number of design changes due to the magnitude.

First though, I am going to weave a smaller piece of some compexity to enter into Small Expressions in Tampa Bay 208. I have the design complete and am vascillating on the colors - in particular the warp. A dark color will make the piece a bit somber but will make the walls of the maze be particularly vvid but the light colors will be a bit muted. On the other hand, a light warp will make the path of the maze pop but wash out the darker colors in the walls of the maze. Ah decisions, decisions...

A Little Blue'll Do Yah

I took a 'quick and dirty' workshop on indigo dyeing last weekend. The instructor was John Pitblado. It only lasted about four hours and was quite fun.

I have only used procion dyes. And never indigo. Everyone always speaks in such hushed tones when it comes to indigo. So I figured I might as well check it out. We used freeze dried indigo which does not require the urine of boys under 13 as does the traditional method. John informed us that the urine of pregnant women, diabetics or alcoholics also works well. This freeze dried stuff is good. It does not smell. Thanks goodness. Mixes up well and seemed to stand up to a lot of messy folks.

It is quite amazing how you put something into the dye pot for a couple of minutes, pull it out and it's green but within a few seconds the piece starts turning blue.

I used some big nuts and rubber bands to create patterns on my blanks. We got to dye two pieces of cotton, a silk scarf. You can see the results. I tried for a very light blue on the scarf so I would indeed wear it sometime. I am not a dark blue person. There is not one piece of dark blue clothing in my closet. And when I was in the corporate world I did not own a blue suit

I also dyed some of my silk yarn to see how it came out. It looked beautiful deep indigo blue while drying. I had to wash it since there was lots of excess dye which came off on my hands when it was dry. I couldn't imagine weaving with it - my hands would be permanently blue. I had to wash it twice in the washing machine to get the excess out.

In the end, it was a mottled blue. Actually two shades of blue, since I put one skein in the dye twice as much to get a deeper shade of blue. I am 'using it up' in a little tapestry right now...an indigo llama. I will stick with procion.

Many Fond Memories

There was a sense of emptiness in the house this morning.

Even the other three dogs felt it.

Pokie normally watches me weave from a small dog bed under the table in the studio. She was the only dog that seemed to enjoy the sound of the constant slamming of the shafts on my table looms while I wove taquete. I kept looking down at the bed expecting to see her looking up at me. But I could only see the memory of her. When I move from room to room I can still imagine her little feet pattering behind me. She would follow me everywhere.

Pokie had a good life with us. She was a dog rescued from a bad situation and was a very sick when we met her. She was a rescue dog of unknown age with heart problems and a hernia. The vet thought she would live perhaps six months or so. Every dog deserves some special time so we adopted her. We used to say she was in 'pre-heaven' while staying with us. And for over two and a half years she brought us great joy.

I, and the rest of the pack will miss her.

The Ikat to Rest

Here is my ikat piece all dyed, washed and ironed. It looks better in the photo than in person. I guess the dye was not well mixed at certain times since it left heavy dye splotches every one in awhile. Part of the piece is salvageable but too many splotches to use the entire piece material. I may experiment with discharging the dye...never done that before....

On this piece, a lot of yellow washed out. I kept rinsing and rinsing and the yellow kept coming out. I finally just put it in the washing machine and that seemed to have removed it all. I am now thinking it may not have been the dye that I painted on the warp that was running but it could have the yellow from the yellow silk weft I used. I never did any color fast test on it.

Well this was an interesting experiment. I have a couple of balls more of the ikat dyed yarn so I need to figure out what I will do with it. It looks like it would make a nice border or lapel for a jacket so I might go for that.

But no hurry....

The Rejected Twill

Here's the twill pattern I decided not to use. I was trying to shift the warp threads so the ikat design would be something like the letter 'N'. I shifted the twill direction to make it stand out more. After weaving a bit I realized I wan't trilled about this twill pattern in ikat - a bit old fashion.

Ater I wove about six inches with the white ikat design I decided I didn't like the contrast between the white and the dark purple [which looks brown in the photo] so I decided to dye the white - golden yellow. I dyed both the woven part and the next six inches of the unwoven warp on the loom to see if there would be a big difference in the end product.

Once finished weaving, I painted the entire piece with a 2:1 water:white vinegar mix, wrapped it in plastic wrap and put it in my old crock pot.

In the end, the dye took well on both parts and kept most of its color even after washing in the washing machine. There does seem to be a richer golden yellow color on the part that was woven then dyed vs. dyed then woven. Most troubling was the yellow stripe of dark dye in the middle of the piece...

Easy Ikat

Remember that silk that I bought that was not color fast...I over dyed it with some ikat ties. It used to look like this. I shifted the design using the easy ikat method I learned at the ASCH conference in Visalia.

Then as I wove it, I painted the warp while on the loom. At one end I started with yellow orange and gradually moved into emerald green. In the picture, I am close about 80% emerald green. I used liquid Createx dye. I have no idea how the dye will actually take...

I didn't like the initial pattern which was warped in a simple twill so I took it off. At the suggestion of a friend, I tightened the sett and used a finer weft. For the weft in the photo, I am using 60/2 silk in a pale yellow.

I like how it looks. It would make a a nice border or lapel on a jacket.

Sample Three

I finished up my third sample maze. This one is about fourteen inches long and two inches wide. I actually wove the beginning and end of the pathway through the maze to encourage the audience to try to connect the two paths. This photo only shows one end.


I still have some warp left...enough for one more sample. I made some modifications to the pattern of sample three so this upcoming last sample will show the new final maze with the actual pathway throughout. This will be the shakedown to ensure I have no mistakes in the pattern and there is indeed a way through the maze. Then I should be ready to plan the larger piece.

Another Sample

I finished my second maze sample...this one with the walls in blue, the path in yellow and the actual path to go through the maze in orange. The size is about 2 by 8 inches ignoring the fringe.

I kept with the symmetrical look with the entry and exit point on the sides near the bottom of the photo. I used the blue as the locking thread so the fringe is 100% yellow and orange threads. The warp I have on the loom is half pale yellow and half pale sky blue. The yellow warp really makes the yellow weft pop in comparison to where the weft goes over the pale blue warp. Another thing to keep in mind when decided on final colors.

The back side is most interesting too...lovely shades of green, purple and yellow-orange. I may consider doing a reversible piece.

I still have some warp left on the loom so I will try another sample...

Triangles

As promised, here is a sampling of my triangle scarves...there were more...but they were given away as gifts.

I like the ones which are more lacy and light. Of course, this probably has something to do with the weather in Southern California....the fog came in this afternoon for a bit so some of these may still be wearable this season.

I must admit, these scarves did not make a big dent in my yarn stash. I was hoping they would create more room for future additions. But alas they do not take much yarn at all. I could weave some more, but fortunately I have returned the triangle loom so I can now get back to more important things...like weaving mazes...

Back in the Groove

You may wonder what I have been doing...not posting and all. I actually think I have finally gotten back in the groove so to speak. I was in a slump after the weaving conference I had attended and couldn't quite get into doing anything.

Well, that isn't actually true...our Guild had a workshop on harness-less weaving and I learned how to use a triangle loom. I borrowed one from Hilda and proceeded to weave quite a few triangle scarves. I don't think I will actually admit to how many... but really quite a few. I kept wondering...hmmm...how would that yarn work on the loom? Or perhaps this yarn? Since I had just cleaned out and organized my stash...all my yarns were fresh in my memory. I'll take a picture of the results sometime and post.

I did finally start on my group project for our tapestry group...you can see what I am working on here. Anyway, as I started weaving that tapestry I started thinking it might be a fun thing to do on my sixteen harness loom...so I tried it out. Here is the result.




Sorry about the picture quality - its tough to get a good picture while the piece is on the loom.

It's a maze - obviously. One can go in one side and out the other. Pretty intriguing. I am going to play around some more on this concept. But I still like bugs.

Textile Painting

Look what we found in the garage during spring cleaning!

These are painted pants from my DH's high school days. His mother had saved them for all these years...look's like the 1960's to me! Quite remarkable.

They are a much more interesting result than the warp painting I did at the Visalia conference. I took a class on Painted Warp with Jannie Taylor.

I brought a warped loom to the class - warped with 20-2 perle cotton in a baby blue in a two shaft plain weave. Janie brought all sorts of textile paints, dyes, pens, markers, stencils etc. And we got to experiment on our warp.

We tried different techniques to acheive different looks, explored the difference in application and effect of different dyes vs. diferent paints. Tried different types of paints including a whole slew of metallic ones. I especially liked the Sunset Gold metallic with the purple paint.

It was great fun. To finish the piece, we had to iron it a bit then wait a week before washing. I was surprised when I took it out of the washing machine and it had not faded at all! All the colors including the dyes held fast.

Another Silk Test

Jackie suggested I test whether a bit of heat and vinegar would make the silk color fast. I went off to the cupboard to see what kinds of vinegar we had which might work...we've got some Chinese varieties - Chinkiang vinegar, Chinese Black vinegar, rice wine vinegar, some expensive French white wine vinegar, some malt vinegar and several varieties of Balsamic vinegars...

I selected the rice wine vinegar as my 'best' choice of what I had in the pantry. I made a small skein of the pink silk. I dropped a couple table spoons of vinegar into a glass with some 'hot water on tap' - it's automatically at 190 degrees right out of the faucet. I dropped the silk in and waited until it cooled to room temperature. Then for the fun part - I got to check if any color would come out. As long as there was vinegar on the yarn it held fast. I washed it out in cold water with soap. No color. Then warmed up the water and lo and behold - the color started coming out.

It will be interesting to see if the over dye I did on this yarn will hold fast. That project is somewhat down the list of projects so it will be at least a month or so before I can say more.

PS I have, since then bought some distilled white vinegar for future dyeing tests and experimentation.

My Not so Easy Ikat

I bought some 7/2 silk in Visalia to play with Easy Ikat. Here are two of the silk cones I bought. I decided to throw them into my crock pot at low along with some other silk that I was preparing for dyeing. And low and behold - much to my chagrin the most of the pink and the green colors came out.

Looks like I have some cones which lose their color at the warmer temperatures. I tested them in cold water and the colors were fast. Sara Lamb had mentioned she once bought some silk that did the very same thing.

Oh well, so much for 'no planning' Easy Ikat... I will just have to add some steps to the process...first I need to test how much color will actually wash out. I will also need to test that if I over dye the resulting silk that those colors will remain fast.

So here's the plan. First, I am going to test how much the colors are lost in different temperatures of water. I am going to tie up some of the silk in its original state with the plastic strips in a pattern of serendipity. Dye the skeins black. Come up with a design incorporating the black along with stripes of the six original colors I bought. I will weave three identical pieces using a bit of each color weft. Then throw one in hot, one in warm and one in cold water and see what happens to the colors.

On the left below, is the skein that I tied, dyed black and untied. I used a cold batch dye method using soda ash. I already knew I would lose the color in hot water. Despite using the cold water method, it was surprising how much red washed out during the rinsing. You can see how much less pink the dyed yarn is than on the cone.

One never gets black when dyeing silk. The black used here pushed a deep purplish brown color which looks nice against the pink. I also dyed a skein plain black for stripes and weft.








In the middle, is the skein which was originally green. On the right is the skein which was originally pink. They should made some interesting designs.

PS all this was occurring as I cleaned out my studios, my closest, the den and the gym. I doubt I will make much more progress for awhile - at least until my studio is straightened and the yarn dry. Given the fog...it might be a long while.

My Crackl'in Kite

When I went to Convergence in Grand Rapids last year I attended a seminar on crackle. For those of you unfamilar with crackle, its a weave structure based a couple of 'rules' and when woven a famous weaver once said it looked like the crackle in old pottery. All the crackle I have woven hasn't reminded me of old pottery...but that's the tale my weaving books tell.

Crackle is a weave structure of no special interest to me except for the fact I am in the Complex Weavers study group of that name. Every year I play around and weave up a crackle pattern for a sample exchange. I have no special attraction for the structure...in fact each time I weave it I wonder why am I actually weaving the structure. I have worked diligently to make it interesting. One year, I attempted to make the structure look like the waves of the ocean. Another time I used sewing thread as the warp and weft and created rainbows. This last time I experimented with cassette tape as the weft.

Ah but back to my story. At the crackle seminar I attended in Grand Rapids the speaker definitely stated that you simply could not get accepted into a juried show if you wove with crackle. NEVER. There was just something about crackle which turns the jurors off.

Hmmm...that certainly sounded like a challenge to me. How could I get a crackle piece into a juried show...and if I was going to get in...why not win a prize? I always love the challenge.

Here is one of my entries into Showcase, a juried show, at the Visalia conference I just attended.




Yes - it is a kite. That's a box kite I constructed with woven material and balsa wood. The material was woven with 3/2 perle cotton and cassette tape in a four harness crackle pattern. The cassette tape was both natural and painted.

The piece placed second in the woven multi-dimensional category.

Onto the next challenge - here is the kite hanging in our backyard. It's quite light and seems like it really wants to fly. Any little bit of breeze and it starts moving upwards. Next time I go to Hawaii I plan to take it along and see how it flies.

Easy Ikat

One of the workshops I took in Visalia was a one day affair on Easy Ikat by Bonnie Tarses. I've never done 'real' ikat so 'easy' ikat seemed just fine to me. Here is a picture of my easy ikat scarf on my loom being woven. It's a 3/2 cotton warp ; sett at 16 epi with 20/2 cotton weft.

Apparently in 'real' ikat, one plans a complex design often on a cartoon, lays out the warp onto the cartoon then carefully ties and dyes the warp in specific ways to get the design desired. At that point - untie, warp and weave.

Easy ikat avoids all that 'nasty' planning. One still ties and dyes...but you just design with what you already have. She does a demo for every class she teaches and just keeps the result for future pieces. Bonnie prefers virtual dyeing to actually dyeing herself...but will do the real thing - usually only in black. Here's a reference to her blog showing the yarn she dyed for our workshop. You can read more about easy ikat there. [If you hate to read she also did a podcast you can listen to - just google her name.]

Since it was only a day class, Bonnie had already done some dyeing and what we got to do was to 'spontaneously' create a warp using some of her dyed yarn. Our workshop fee only covered enough dyed yarn to do about half a scarf so we added some solid strips to make a nice pattern. It was all planned and created on the warping board. I shifted the yarns to get a pattern I liked and tied it up for latter warping onto the loom. Unfortunately it slipped a bit in the warping process but I still like the result. Even my DOH commented approvingly.

I wove the piece in about an hour or so...it was a plain weave using only two shafts on my eight shaft loom. It would have taken less but I ripped [does one frog on a loom?] out about a foot or two at the beginning since I didn't like the warp color. I started out with white...and then changed to navy blue weft. The darker color looks better.

This workshop was fun and quite lively. It was my fifth day in Visalia and the perfect workshop for my last workshop of the conference. After that - it was onto shopping and finding the perfect silk...oh and perhaps some linen....tapestry bobbins...tapestry needles...loom accessories...

The Painters' Studio

I have been decompressing from a week in Visalia at the ASCH [Association of Southern California Handweavers] conference which had the theme 'wildflowers of the Sierras'. I'll post some items about the conference over the next week or so.

Our Guild created a booth for the occasion. Here's a picture of it all set up in the exhibit hall. Almost all of our Guild participated.

The concept was fairly simple...it was a painters' studio in the mountains.

The painters had gone for a walk and picked some wildflowers that you can see out the window. The window is a tapestry that I wove.

The painters created a still life arrangement of those wildflowers sitting in a blue vase on a blue and lavender runner. The flowers were all made of woven fiber or crocheted yarns. It's in the center of the booth.

The painters then created a variety of pieces which were their interpretations of the the still life flower arrangement. They were all painted in fiber...woven, knitted, quilted, embroidered, glued...all done in the conference colors. All quite different but all most interestingly similar.

Overall it came out quite nicely. Looking at the photo again, the booth could have used a blue rug. But never the less, the booth won two awards - - Best Interpretation of Theme and Best Use of Booth Space.

Weekend in Review

Here is my little sample from the workshop I took last weekend on Color Blending in Tapestry with Tricia Golberg. I think I will call the piece Sailor's Delight. I reminds me of a reddish sky at sunset while sailing...

The workshop was interesting, the instructor charming and the participants a hoot. A great combination for a weekend class.

I did several things I had never done before. I wove this tapestry from the back. I wove dots and I used bobbins. I really liked the bobbins better than the standard butterflies which always seem to come apart when I use them for awhile. It seems so neat and tidy to have those bobbins hanging down from the tapestry when not in use. I will look for those in Visalia.

Weaving from the back was new. A new habit I picked up while weaving from the back was tidying up the warp ends which would be facing me all the time. I hate a messy foreground while working. Plus, much less clean up at the end of the tapestry. Whenever I wanted to see what the tapestry actually looked like I had to turn the loom around, walk around to the front or peek into a mirror. It was an interesting feeling...not sure if I like or dislike it. I may try a couple of my next weavings from the back and see how they turn out. At times it was difficult to see where I was in my weaving or where I would want to put a specific dot but otherwise it seemed OK.

We did three types of color blending as you can see working from the bottom up. First was hatching were we mimicked an outline of a barn like structure. Then I did a blending with four bobbins with different combinations of colors. And the last was using dots to blend from light to dark to light. All in all quite useful and will use all in future weavings.

We started our weaving with twining. Since I wasn't going to hem my piece I decided to braid the ends. I left the twining on the bottom of the piece and twined with five threads. I braided the top the same but without twining. I wanted to have a sampler that would remind me of how each looks. To me each is a bit different - but neither is something to write home about. [Note to self: its tough to twine with 12/12 Finnish cotton warp.]

My weft yarn was quite interesting. It is a 100% silk that I dyed. I wove with five threads at a time using a 10 epi. I beat solidly about every other round trip. Once off the loom, it was almost stiff as card board. I've never had anything as stiff as that. If I bend it a bit - the piece will stand up on its own! This gives me all sorts of ideas....

Great weekend...and I am ready to start weaving tapestry again.

Weekend Workshop

I am packed and ready to roll...weave that is..loom is warped at 10 epi, I found an awl as well as a mirror. Yarn is dyed and and packed in value order. Yup. Ready to roll. I am taking a tapestry workshop this weekend on Color Blending with Tapestry with Tricia Goldberg.

We are to:

learn how to achieve certain effects in tapestry by combining colors that can be subtle or high contrast. Colors can be blended by combining different colors on a bobbin or with weaving techniques and patterns. Beginning students will learn full pass techniques, while more advanced students can use half pass techniques and begin experimentation. Students can try also try interesting things with color using eccentric weft, weaving that varies from the horizontal line...

Sounds like fun! I will, of course, let you know how it goes.

Aristobia Beetle off the Loom

Half a Bug

I started weaving my new warp yesterday morning as planned. So far, I have half a bug; half an aristobia beetle from Thailand. The shiny copper metallic thread combined with the rust color in rayon is coming out quite nicely on the green.

This is the shake down cruise for both the loom and the warp so things are going slowly. This is the first warp I have done on this loom with fine threads. Fine threads is the reason I bought this particular loom - an ashford sixteen harness table loom with a 24 inch weaving width and a hanging beater. I must say that hanging beater is heavenly - easily provides a perfect consistent beat.

I have re-adjusted how the shafts were hung. The loom directions suggested hanging them in such a manner that each one is slightly higher than the previous. That was fairly impossible for me to achieve given the spacings on the texsolvv and the space available on the loom. It would probably work with eight harnesses - not sixteen. And anyway, it was giving me an odd shed which kept catching some threads...so I went back to a more level hanging. It's better.

I also saw a couple of twisted heddles in the back...I figure I will fix those when I take this first piece off the loom or when the thread might break.

In the photo you can easily see the two toned warp at the top where it is waiting to be woven. The impact is quite subtle in the weaving.