On the flight back, I read through Jane Dunnewold’s Art Cloth.  A really fascinating read – she covers a variety of surface design materials (dye, paint, discharge, foil) and a bunch of ways to apply them (painting, stenciling, stamping, and silkscreening), plus a lot of design tips on combining techniques successfully.  Definitely a winner!  I came out of it with a lot of ideas for decorating cloth, and an atavistic urge to start silkscreening.  My family used to silkscreen our own holiday cards – using Chinese paper-cuts for the primary design – and I have fond memories of running all over the house as a child, laying wet silkscreened cards out on the floor to dry.  I did some more silkscreening in college, and it was one of the most fun things I did while I was there.

Plus, I have a whole roll of photo-emulsion sheet that I bought a couple years back, which slowly degenerates over time and (if it’s still any good) ought to be used.  Great excuse!

Anyway, I also spent some time thinking about designing doubleweave using Photoshop and a divided parallel threading.  Bonnie Inouye had very kindly sent me her article in the February 2007 Complex Weavers Journal, “Double Weave on a Divided Parallel Threading”, back when I was trying to figure out doubleweave.   Her article showed a clear and easy way to understand doubleweave design using tie-up and treadling.  After using a modification of this method to design triple weave, it occurred to me that one could extend the method to design complex doubleweave (and triple or quadruple weave!) designs in the liftplan, using an adaptation of Marg Coe‘s Photoshop design methods to generate the appropriate design.  This proved to be a fascinating and very rich area to contemplate.  I think I will spend more time delving into this, and possibly submit it as a topic for Complex Weavers Seminars.  Even if I don’t, it’s making me think deeply about doubleweave, which is a Good Thing!

Once the plane landed, we hightailed it for home, dropped off the luggage, adored the cat, and got some food into us.  After that, I was still feeling pretty peppy (I slept an hour or so on the plane), so I went to the loom and got to work.  I threaded, sleyed, and tied on the next diversified plain weave warp:

diversified plain weave warp, tied on and ready to weave!

By this time, though, it was close to bedtime (an hour or so past bedtime if  you considered the jet lag), and I had been working for five straight hours, so I left the warp and went to bed.  This morning, after Mike gets up, I’ll start weaving the sample.  I have corrected the draft (Marg Coe was kind enough to send me an example of a correctly designed diversified plain weave draft, and it showed me where I’d made the error), so all that needs to be done before starting is wind some pirns!

Triple weave draft, showing borders

Since this is virtually illegible, I’ve uploaded a .zip of the .wif file here: triple weave draft, zipped .wif file.  It probably isn’t much more comprehensible, but at least you can see it a little better!

Basically what’s going on is three warps and five wefts (!).  Two of the wefts are thick wefts, and I’ve indicated those in red and brown.  They’re also larger than the others.  One weft (dark blue) is for the middle layer, and the two tabby wefts are white and yellow, respectively.  The black warp is the middle layer, the other two are top and bottom layers.  The first section is solely middle layer, the second section is all three layers but without the thick wefts.  The center section is three layers with the thick wefts.

This is very difficult to visualize since weaving software doesn’t handle three layers gracefully, so here is one of the intermediate steps, a double weave version without the middle layer, shown in Fiberworks PCW doubleweave view:

Double weave version, with borders

And since it’s hard to make out any detail, here’s the double weave with plain weave borders zip file.  (Unzip to get the .wif file.)

I’m not kidding when I say that this draft took me three hours.  It was incredibly tricky to put together and I’m sure it contains errors, so don’t assume this is a weavable draft!  It was more of a thought experiment, to rough out the process of creating such a monstrosity, rather than a polished version.  I have no idea whether it would weave up gracefully – I think it probably needs significant massaging, first.  (For one thing, I didn’t think about whether it would weave independent layers, a tube, or connected layers when sequencing the treadles.  Also, the three layers need to be stitched together!)

Having spent three hours generating this, I realized that I was probably going to have to redesign the draft after determining the proper sett for two layers of plain weave and one layer of tied weave.  This one is designed around a sett of 120 epi, and the correct sett for three layers is probably considerably less, maybe 108 or 96?  The odds are that I will have to scale down the design, which would mean having to redo the whole thing.  But I learned a lot this morning, and captured the steps in Evernote, so I don’t think it will take me three hours next time!

I had been puzzling over what to do with my half of the qiviut, since I don’t wear scarves but do wear shawls.  As I was waking up this morning, I dreamily confused a beautiful doubleweave scarf that Ruth Blau had shown off at our little get together yesterday with my qiviut scarf.

Ruth’s scarf, which was positively brilliant, had two layers of different widths – one wider black layer and one narrower, painted-warp layer.  The narrow, brighter layer alternated sides to produce an attractive windowed effect on either side – windows of color against a black background.  I really loved the look.

So then I thought, what if I did a shawl in doubleweave, with a narrow strip of white-silk-and-qiviut running down the center?  With a black background, white silk, and brownish-gray qiviut, that would be quite striking.  I could add some inlay on the sides of the  black layer if desired, to give a little more visual “jazz” to the design.

But then, what about the back?  I didn’t really want to do windows, I liked the idea of having a solid center design down one entire length of the shawl.

Then I thought, perhaps I could do triple weave in the center, and have two layers of the white silk and qiviut, one on either side, possibly blending into a single layer with the black in the center.  (Pat Stewart does wonderful work in that vein, and was kind enough to show me how she does it.  I haven’t seen her work online, but it’s beautiful, inspirational stuff.)  The qiviut is fine enough (7000 ypp) that I think three layers would still drape OK.

This idea intrigues me enough that I will probably go back and work out the draft for it.  I don’t know how it would work in practice, but since I still have six days of vacation left, I have to fill in the time somehow!  And this strikes me as intriguing enough to try.

First, I finished weaving the final shawl on the doubleweave warps.  This one is woven using two solid colored wefts, one the rich deep orange-red of homemade tomato sauce, and one a royal purple.  The wefts did not quite dye evenly so there is some intriguing color variation.  I wove this with 1/3, 2/2, and 3/1 twill in the foreground, but a plain 1/3 twill background – I’d post photos, as it came out looking quite beautiful, but it’s a gift for a friend and I want to surprise her!  And I managed to weave up nearly all of the shawl (72 of 80 inches) today, so I think I’m doing pretty well.  I still need to hemstitch the loom end before I can take it off the loom, and plan to finish that tonight.

Second, I did my next two sets of dye samples.  The first one nearly had me tearing my hair out with frustration, but after sulking for about half a day, I started a second sample, this time with a few changes in the recipe and much more stirring, and this one (finally!) seems to be coming out okay.  I’m considering doing Cibacron F samples as well for this study group, but I think I will err on the side of less insanity and just do Lanasets.

Or maybe not.  Who knows?

Third, I started designing tied weaves.  Here are the two tied weaves I cooked up this morning:

quigley (four-tie) weave, but weaves equivalently to a double two-tie

quigley weave, ties in twill order

In case you were wondering about the four ties, it’s because I wanted to be able to experiment with different patterns in the ties.  I’m definitely getting a better understanding of how to generate these – now I want to try something really interesting, like using 12 shafts for the ties and doing a network drafted pattern in the ties as well as using pattern shafts to create the main pattern.

The advantage of a network drafted pattern in the ties is that I can do simpler patterns as well.  On a 12-shaft network with a 4-end initial, I can weave anything that is weavable on a four-end straight draw, meaning I can weave the two examples above as well as more complicated patterns.  This way I can start with a relatively simple pattern, see what that looks like, and then continue into more complex patterns, all on the same warp!

Of course, that assumes that I can figure out the general algorithm for combining an arbitrary pattern of ties with the “usual” pattern, but I don’t think it’s that complicated – give me a day or two and I’ll figure it out.  With this, as with most things, Photoshop will be my friend.

Some of the things I’m planning to try out on this soon-to-be tied weave warp:

• simple patterns in Summer and Winter or double two-tie unit weave
• different wefts – rayon chenille, cashmere, feltable wool
• complex patterns in the ties
• complex patterns in the pattern threads (network drafting on 12 shafts and a 4-end initial, anyone?)

and various combinations of the above.  I think I will refrain from working with gradient colors for this warp, partly because I’m out of color gradient yarn, but mostly because I think there will be enough going on already!

Still haven’t chosen a yarn for this warp.  I’m thinking either 60/2 or 30/2 silk for the ground cloth, and am really really really trying to convince myself to use 30/2.  Trouble is, I think 60/2 would be so much more FUN…especially with that 3450 ypp rayon chenille I’ve got somewhere…but, being practical, 30/2 silk would make it much easier to see what I’m doing.

Off to stir the dyepots!

completed handwoven doubleweave shawl, red/gold background

completed handwoven doubleweave shawl, blue/purple/fuchsia background

I’m VERY pleased with it, and will be wearing it tonight for the Complex Weavers Fashion Show.

Complex Weavers Seminars has been delightful so far – getting to meet a lot of the people I’ve been corresponding with for years!  The first seminar, Su Butler speaking on tied weaves, was fantastic, and has inspired me to try tied weaves next.  I’m eagerly looking forward to the others.