Itchiku Kubota

By Tien Chiu | Published: March 9, 2010
I recently received (from Amazon) an utterly fantastic book, Kimono as Art: The Landscapes of Itchiku Kubota.  If you are a dyer, or a textile artist of any form, do not walk, RUN to Amazon and pick up a copy.  It is inspirational. Itchiku Kubota was a Japanese artist who used brush painting and various forms [...]
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Using Photoshop to simulate colors in weaving

By Tien Chiu | Published: March 9, 2010
As a way of learning everything possible about weaving, I’ve been joining lots of the Complex Weavers study groups.  In fact, I currently belong to three: the Garment Study Group, the Fine Threads Study Group, and the Computer Aided Design Exchange study group.  The first two are pretty self-explanatory, the third focuses on new ways [...]
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Plaster mummy

By Tien Chiu | Published: March 7, 2010
Today I had Mike transform me into a plaster mummy, covering me with wet, rapidly-hardening plaster bandages until I was in a full-body cast from neck to mid-thigh. No, I don’t have a plaster fetish.  (Really.)  Instead, we were preparing to cast a dress form using the instructions in the My Twin Dressform manual.  First you [...]
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Costly mistakes

By Tien Chiu | Published: March 7, 2010
Well, I went up to Sharon’s yesterday, and we took a look at the coat and dress.  Apparently my catchstitching in the dress hem was too tight, so the top of the hem is puckering.  All those tiny catchstitches will need to be taken out and redone.  We might be able to salvage something by [...]
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Whither next?

By Tien Chiu | Published: March 6, 2010
As the handwoven wedding dress project draws to a close, I’m starting to think about what I want to do next.  The latest Shuttle, Spindle, and Dyepot had an article on their TLC (Teaching and Learning through Correspondence) program, which is a year-long program of directed self-study.  You come up with a topic you want [...]
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