textiles | Tien Chiu's Blog

May 5, 2019 by Tien Chiu Leave a Comment

Painted warp samples

Sorry for the long silence! I’ve been prepping for a longish vacation – nine days visiting friends and family on the East Coast. Just finished four days visiting my best friend Edouard in New York City, and now en route to Maryland for another five days with family. I’ll return home Thursday.

Since I’ve had quite a bit of travel time, I’ve been spending some of it finishing up the painted warp samples for my upcoming talk at ANWG. The challenge was showing how warp and weft colors interact to produce the finished cloth – particularly when the colors aren’t solid, and I’m using multiple structures in the same swatch.

Fortunately, I always dye a few extra warp threads when painting a warp to make repairs easy, so I had a bundle of eight or nine leftover warp threads when I was done weaving. I tacked them down at the boundary between weave structures, and ran a bundle of weft threads across the swatch to show the weft colors. Like this:

painted warp swatch with a bundle of warp threads running vertically and a bundle of weft threads running horizontally — painted warp swatch

I think this shows off the warp and weft colors nicely, and the swatch shows how they weave up together, both in a complex design and in a simpler one.

This particular (8-shaft) draft blends colors quite a bit. I’m doing another set of samples that uses the same threading and the same colors, but a VERY different tie-up that keeps the warp and weft colors largely separate. It will produce a vastly different look. The point here is that people often focus on the color palette, when structure is just as important. The color palette determines what color blends are possible, but structure controls what color blends actually appear, and what blends appear in which area.

I wove a surprisingly large number of samples on this warp. It was a 14-yard warp, and I got 32 samples out of it. I’ll be doing another 32 samples in an identical color palette using the other structure, which – added to the 20-odd samples that Laura Fry already wove for me – will give me about 80-90 painted warp samples for my seminar. I plan to weave another 50-60 for the online course I’m developing, but not until I get back from ANWG.

Here (purely for the eye candy) are a few more painted warp samples:

painted warp swatch in pinks and purples

painted warp swatch with dark blue mottled warp and pale pink weft

mottled blue painted warp with pale blue weft

The last two swatches demonstrate the interplay/trade-off between woven pattern and dyed pattern. In the blue swatch with pale pink weft, the high contrast between warp and weft makes the woven pattern quite prominent. So you don’t see much of the pattern dyed into the warp; it becomes a textural background to the pattern woven into the cloth.

In the blue swatch with the lighter blue warp, the warp and weft have much less contrast, so the pattern dyed into the warp is much clearer. But you can still see structural effects. The dyed pattern is much clearer in areas where the woven pattern is simplest. At top right, the simple zigzag makes it easier to appreciate the mottled blue dye job than at bottom left, where the diamonds push the blue mottling into the background as a textural effect. Neither effect is wrong – just different. Knowing how your design decisions play out in the finished cloth makes you a more effective designer.

I’ve been having a lot of fun looking at and analyzing my samples. Not just pretty cloth – informative experiments! Art science at its best. 🙂

More details and registration for my ANWG seminar on the conference website:
http://www.anwgconference2019.com/

April 16, 2019 by Tien Chiu 3 Comments

Robes of fire

The bathrobe is done, and it is GORGEOUS!! It will keep me toasty warm, mentally and physically, all year round:

bathrobe in fiery colors — robes of fire!

I’m particularly happy with how the pattern of the reds and oranges came out. Because I sponged on the red at the very top of the scrunched-up bathrobe, the red patches are centered in the most intense patches of orange, like this:

closeup of flame-dyed bathrobe, showing the intense patches of red centered in the patches of orange

This gives a really nice effect of real fire.

Compare this to the tie-dye towel from my initial experiment:

image of tie-dye towel with randomly painted lines

I tried the paint the lines to fall in the more intense areas of orange, but as you can see, it’s really not the same, and the bathrobe looks way better. Hurray!

The bathrobe inspired me, so last weekend, I hosted a small tie-dye party for some friends. I spent most of the time helping them with their tie-dyes, but took a few moments to make two scrunch-dyed T-shirts for myself – one in fiery colors, like the bathrobe, and another in yellow, orange, and black.

Needless to say, as soon as I laid down the first shirt to take photos, this happened:

photo of fiery-colored T-shirt with a photobombing cat (Tigress) — a photobombing cat!

I love the T-shirt! You’ll notice how it has much more detailed crinkling than the bathrobe. That’s because it’s a lighter-weight fabric than the bathrobe, so it holds tight wrinkles better – and thus produces a more detailed dye job. Not better or worse, just different.

The second shirt reminded me of Sharon’s comment on the previous blog post – “I think Tigress was born tie-dyed.”

I laid the shirt on the bed and snapped a photo of it next to Tigress. There is definitely a family resemblance between the tie-dyed shirt and Her Royal Highness – though, of course, there is no question about who is more fabulously beautiful!

Tigress with a black, orange, and yellow scrunch-dyed tie-dye shirt

Of course, if you take a photo of one cat, the other cat must photobomb. It is The Feline Way:

Fritz sitting on the T-shirt I was trying to take a photo of

Fortunately (for the human), His Royal Highness was just a moment too late – I had already taken the photo I needed. But I snapped a photo of him anyway, because how could you not take a photo of such utter cuteness?

And then, of course, he got a belly rub, because I have only One Job.

April 10, 2019 by Tien Chiu 1 Comment

Tie-dyed towels?

Honey, in this household, everything is tie-dyed.

(Except Fritz and Tigress. They run too fast.)

More seriously, I’ve been gearing up to tie-dye that bathrobe I mentioned a few posts back. And since it’s a big expensive project, that means I need to do samples! And what better way to sample for a big, sumptuous bathrobe than by doing some big, sumptuous towels?

I had been considering ice-dyeing this bathrobe, so the first step was buying 80 pounds of ice. 40 pounds for ice dyeing, and 40 pounds for rinsing out the tie-dyes afterwards.

(Dyer’s trick: do the first rinse of fiber-reactive-dyed items in ice water, to prevent unreacted dye from migrating and staining other areas. The ice bath chills the dye to the point where it won’t react in that rinse, and the ice water rinse removes the soda ash, so the dye won’t react in subsequent rinses either. Presto, your white areas stay white.)

I was thinking of two options. One was an indigo blue background and fuchsia/turquoise/purple patterning. The other was my usual favorite, orange and yellow background with red patterning. Ice dyeing would add randomness to the pattern, and variations in intensity – dark and light areas where the ice diverted or diluted the dyes.

Here’s an ice-dyed T-shirt I did in 2016 that gives you an idea of what you can get from ice dyeing:

So I made up a bunch of dyes and did the towels. I did one towel in navy blue, turquoise, purple, and fuchsia, ice dyed in a spiral – navy blue on the bottom and turquoise/fuchsia/purple on top. Then I did two more towels in fiery colors – one in an ice-dyed spiral with orange and yellow on the bottom and fuchsia/scarlet/orange on to. The other I dyed in a scrunch-dyed pattern with orange and yellow on top, and painted it afterwards with a network of red lines.

Here’s what the fiery-color ice-dyed spiral towel looked like after I piled ice on top and dripped the dyes on:

ice dyed towel in the process of dyeing it — ice dyed towel in progress

And here’s what all three towels looked like when done:

Blue, fuchsia, and turquoise towel — Sample towel #1 – blue, purple, fuchsia, turquoise

Tie-dyed towel - yellow-orange and scarlet-fuchsia ice dyed spiral — Sample towel #2 – ice dyed spiral in yellow/orange/scarlet/fuchsia

Sample towel #3 - yellow-orange with red lines — Sample towel #3 – side 1

Sample towel #3, the other side - yellow-orange with red lines — Sample towel #3 – the other side

Obviously (if you are me, anyway) the choice is #3. A dark blue bathrobe in the dark winter is a nonstarter – I’d want to shoot myself by the time January rolled around. And I didn’t like the cool reds or the way the ice diluted the color. A bathrobe the color of fire would be the perfect thing to warm me up during the (cough) freezing California winters.

So yesterday I soaked the bathrobe in soda ash solution, spun it out briefly in the washer, and arranged it on a baker’s full-size sheet pan. Like this:

bathrobe scrunched up on a baker's sheet pan, ready for dyeing — bathrobe, ready for dyeing!

Then I poured a quart of yellow dye onto the bottom of the sheet pan. Which vanished immediately.

I scratched my head, and mixed up another quart. Which also vanished immediately.

At which point I poured in a leftover pint of golden yellow. Repeat vanishment.

I abandoned subtlety, and mixed up half a gallon of yellow dye, throwing in another quart of soda ash solution just in case there wasn’t enough. I poured that into the bottom of the sheet pan. Take that, bathrobe!

Finally, I had yellow peeking up from the bottom, as I wanted. I started dripping on the orange dye.

Here’s what the bathrobe looked like now:

bathrobe sprinkled with orange and yellow dye

After sprinkling on the orange dye, I decided not to paint on the red lines but to try an experiment: sponging on just a little bit of red dye to create a tracery of red lines in the center of the most intense orange areas.

Here’s what the bathrobe looked like partway through the sponging process:

bathrobe sprinkled with orange dye, partially sponged with red dye — bathrobe, sprinkled with orange dye, partially sponged with red dye

And here’s what it looks like at the edge, where you can see all three layers of dye: red, orange, and yellow:

bathrobe - showing all three three layers of dye: red, orange, yellow

And what does the finished bathrobe look like? Tough noogies, sweetheart – the dyes haven’t finished setting yet, so I don’t know yet. It’ll be another couple hours before I can pull it off the tray start the rinsing process, and that will take another half-day or more. So I’ll be in suspense for another day or so – and so will you.

Perhaps this would be a good metaphor:

See you (and the bathrobe) tomorrow!

March 20, 2019 by Tien Chiu 3 Comments

A dyeing extravaganza

I started recovering from my cold right around the time the weather cleared up, so one of the first things I did was wind and paint the warp for my painted-warp samples. Here it is, festooning our fig tree:

painted warp hung to dry in the fig tree

There are actually two warps, wound and painted together, which will be woven using the exact same threading and treadling. Only the tie-up will be different. But! One fabric will blend warp and weft colors into a single, mixed color. The other will separate warp and weft colors as much as possible. As a result, the two fabrics will look quite different. They should be quite instructive for my students.

Since I had a bunch of leftover dye after painting the warp, of course I had to add a few T-shirts to my wardrobe. So I grabbed a few shirts and used them to soak up extra dye.

(I am infernally lazy about clothing. Since I am 5’0″ with extremely broad shoulders, muscular arms, and weigh considerably more than I should, it’s nearly impossible to find clothes that fit. My solution is to find one type of clothing that fits, buy a dozen of it in white, and dye twelve different variants so they all look creatively unique. Back when I was working in high-tech, it was short-sleeve button-down shirts; nowadays I mostly just roll with T-shirts.)

Of course, as soon as I laid the shirts on the bed for photography, the inevitable happened. Because in this household, cats are always standing by to help!

Fortunately, a bit of a belly rub, some head scritching, and a bit of out and out cat-treat bribery convinced Mr. Fritz to take himself elsewhere. (Of course, this could explain why cats are so eager to help, but what’s a human to do? Moving the cat would be unthinkable!)

So here are the shirts I dyed. First up is my favorite. Usually I only use two colors with scrunch dyed shirts, but this time I used three colors – a warm fuschia, gold, and indigo blue. I LOVE the results – the photo really doesn’t do it justice:

multi-color low water immersion dyed shirt

This shirt, dyed in a mix of indigo, turquoise, and steel gray, came out gorgeous, but a bit too subdued for my tastes (what can I say, I’m a magpie!) Fortunately, my friend Sand fell instantly in love with it, so I gave it to them, and we were both delighted.

A T-shirt tie-dyed in indigo blue and steel gray

I have mixed feelings about the Wild Boar Farms T-shirt below:

A Wild Boar Farms T-shirt tie-dyed in orange and green

The colors are a bit more muted than I had intended – partly because the shirt is 50/50 cotton-polyester, which I hadn’t realized before dyeing. (Polyester doesn’t take fiber-reactive dyes, so the color is less intense than on a pure cotton shirt.) On the other hand…the color is PERFECT for a tomato farm T-shirt, which is exactly as I intended! And it captures perfectly the colors of my favorite tomato variety, Berkeley Tie-Dye, bred by…Wild Boar Farms!

A Berkeley Tie-Dye tomato I grew last year - red, green, and yellow stripes — A Berkeley Tie-Dye tomato I grew last year

Meanwhile, the samples Laura Fry wove up for me arrived. I have not yet photographed them, though, because when I tried to take photos, this happened:

My cat Tigress sitting on handwoven samples — Tigress, helping with photos

Since I was out of cat treats (just kidding – the world would end if I actually ran out of cat treats!), I had to abandon the samples to Ms. Tigress and give up on photography for the day. (What? Move the cat? Unthinkable!)

But the samples are quite interesting – looking forward to getting the photos and analyzing the color interactions. Plus, they’re pretty!

I’m also planning another dye day…including not one, but TWO new bathrobes. A big event for me…I only do a new bathrobe every few years, and it’s a big deal because I like huge, floor-length, luxurious bathrobes. They’re expensive, tricky to handle, and soak up a LOT of dye – so it’s rather like trying to dye a giant ball gown. So stay tuned…fun times ahead!

March 9, 2019 by Tien Chiu 1 Comment

Science, hypothesis testing, and painted warp samples

I’m teaching two classes in June, at ANWG – a workshop on color mixing and a seminar on how to choose colors and weave structures for painted warps. (You can register for either of them here. Friday’s morning’s talk on painted warps is already full, but last I heard there were still spaces in the workshop and in the afternoon seminar.)

Since I’ve been too foggy-headed to do much work on Color Study #5 for the workshop, and I need to create some more examples for the painted warp seminar, I’ve been brainstorming painted warp samples instead.

I already have one set of samples, which Laura Fry wove for me, and which are winging their way to me as I write. They are woven on a warp that I had previously dyed in rainbow colors, in a variety of structures and with carefully chosen weft colors, and are lovely:

first set of painted warp samples, woven by Laura Fry — first set of painted warp samples

However, since I didn’t plan out the warp colors in advance, they don’t fully demonstrate the principles that I want to illustrate. So a second set of samples will be needed.

There are two approaches to sampling. The first is the exhaustive, information-gathering approach. This is where you have no hypothesis and are trying to develop one by gathering data, so you try every possible combination and then develop a theory to fit the data. (Cue 1,500 dye samples.) This is incredibly labor-intensive, but sometimes it’s got to be done.

I had originally planned to take this approach to painted warp sampling, because I didn’t have a solid theoretical basis for color. I thought up all the color and weave structure combinations that I thought would be useful to try, and came up with about 1,500 of them. Clearly this was not going to fly.

Fortunately, after another year and a half of study, plus teaching the first half of the Color Courage for Weavers Workshop course (it’s amazing how much more you learn through teaching), I now have a solid understanding of how color works in weaving. Very solid. I won’t claim to understand everything about color (nobody ever understands everything about anything), but at this point I think I understand enough about color in weaving to solve almost all the common color problems in weaving, or explain why the problem isn’t resolvable. (As in physics, no matter how much you know, you still can’t do the impossible.)

Since I now know more, I can take the other approach to sampling, which is testing a hypothesis. This is where you say “I think X will happen if I do Y, and will do a sample to see if this is true.”

So now I’m formulating samples to demonstrate known principles, rather than doing samples in order to figure out the principles.

Suddenly, I’ve gone from 1,500 samples to 44. Whew!!

Here are some of the principles I’m planning to demonstrate:

Warps with a wide range of values (i.e., that contain light, medium, and dark values) will make pattern appear/disappear in areas, no matter what weft is chosen.
Warps with a narrower range of values (i.e. all light, all medium, all dark, or combinations of any two) can be made to have bold or subtle pattern depending on choice of weft colors and weave structure.
Warps made with colors that fall between two primaries (primaries here are cyan (turquoise), magenta, and yellow) will allow you to choose a weft that preserves the bright colors while blending with everything else – warps that don’t, will blend into duller colors if woven in a structure that blends colors.
If your colors blend into dull colors, choosing a weave structure that separates warp and weft colors as much as possible (by creating warp dominant and weft dominant areas but not 50-50 mixes) will allow you to preserve the bright colors in your painted warp.
To show off painted warps, use a weft that is the same darkness or darker – a lighter weft will tend to draw attention to itself, pushing the painted warp into the background.

The ANWG seminar will likely form the nucleus for an online course about weaving with painted warps. It probably won’t be released for awhile yet, though – I’m planning to revamp my Color Courage for Weavers online course offerings and the painted warp course will definitely have to wait until after that work is done.

I’ve chosen the colors for the samples and am currently debating drafts. The simplest choice would be a plain twill plus twill blocks, which would probably resonate with students who prefer simpler structures. The twill would demonstrate what happens when you pick a structure that blends colors, and the twill blocks would demonstrate what happens when you mix colors. Simple and neat.

However, I’ve woven miles of twill and twill blocks for my other samples, and I’m desperately bored of both structures. I also want to demonstrate that you can weave sexier structures than those. So I’m thinking of using these two drafts, which I was using to demonstrate optical mixing and simultaneous contrast in my Color Courage for Weavers Workshop course a few weeks ago.

Here’s the first draft, from Handweaving.net (contributed by an anonymous visitor). It demonstrates what happens when you blend colors:

Handweaving.net draft #45549, contributed by an anonymous visitor

And here is the same draft with a different tie-up, demonstrating keeping colors separate:

The same draft, but with a bolder twill tie-up

Kathy Fennell (one of the course participants) wove up both drafts, and they look quite nice in real life. They need very different setts, of course, but they look good enough that I think they would work to demonstrate the principles. And it’s a nice touch that they are the same design, except that one is subtle and the other bold.

The only thing I worry about is that they will look too complex and will intimidate some students. And 44 samples in that one weave structure is a LOT! Perhaps I will rethread to something different, halfway through.

Meanwhile, the cold is starting to improve, so I’ll be back at work on Color Study 5 for Color Courage for Weavers – Workshop later today.

Color Study 5 is about visual complexity/busy-ness, which is basically how much effort it takes for the brain to take in/process a piece. It’s a juicy topic, and I’m starting with an explanation of how the brain processes an image – any image. Which, in turn, starts with some observations about what our visual system evolved to do. It’s really cool stuff.

For example, our eyes are irresistibly attracted to areas of high contrast, particularly light/dark contrast. Our eyes go to areas of high contrast first, and as designers we need to be aware of that/take advantage of that in when designing, to focus the eye where we want it. But why is that? It’s because the eye is physically built for edge detection, finding and signaling edges before data even goes to the brain. The stronger the contrast, the louder the signal. That’s because early detection of edges helps the brain distinguish pattern from ground (objects from background) faster. And that, in turn, enables us to detect food and predators faster and more efficiently.

There are other factors related to our evolution that affect how we view an object, and how the brain processes what we see. That, in turn, influences how we need to design.

Do my students need to know all that information about human evolution before they can design effectively? Technically, no. I could just list off the important factors and tell them to design using those factors. But I believe that giving them the why is important, because it enables them to do more than memorize – it enables them to think for themselves, to reason about other factors that I may not be giving them. For example, if they encounter a diagonal line, they might say, “Aha! And how would the primitive brain react to diagonal lines in nature? What diagonal lines might it encounter?” and get insight from that.

When I was sixteen, I went to a summer program that taught the process of mathematics – not just facts, but the intellectual explorations involved in doing mathematical research. The motto of the program was “Think deeply of simple things.”

And that’s how I approach teaching – not just what, but also why.