Tien Chiu

  • Home
  • About
    • Honors, Awards, and Publications
  • Online Teaching
  • Gallery
  • Essays
  • Book
  • Blog
  • Dye samples
You are here: Home / Archives for All blog posts / textiles / dyeing

April 16, 2019 by Tien Chiu

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.

Filed Under: All blog posts, textiles, dyeing Tagged With: tie-dye

April 10, 2019 by Tien Chiu

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:

ice dyed T-shirt
ice dyed T-shirt from 2016

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
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:

Fritz staring at feathers

See you (and the bathrobe) tomorrow!

Filed Under: All blog posts, textiles, dyeing Tagged With: tie-dye

March 20, 2019 by Tien Chiu

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
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!

Fritz, helping out with photos!

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!

Filed Under: All blog posts, textiles, dyeing, weaving Tagged With: tie-dye

June 11, 2018 by Tien Chiu

Pictures of 1000 dye samples are now online!

A quick note to let y’all know: I’ve posted 1000 of my 1500 dye samples on my website, along with an extensive write-up about my dye process. The other 500 samples are still being photographed, but they should be up later this week.

Here’s the link to the master page:

Dye Sample Project

Please spread the word! It was a LOT of work photographing everything, color-correcting the images, and writing/posting the documentation for the samples. I did it because I thought others might find them useful – so please let others know they’re there!

dye sample books
dye sample books

 

Filed Under: All blog posts, textiles, dyeing Tagged With: procion mx dye samples

May 22, 2018 by Tien Chiu

Breakthrough

The last two years have been a bit of a puzzle for me. I’ve done virtually no weaving – which is pretty darn odd, considering I quit my job so I could focus on developing my career as a textile artist. At first I thought it was because I was busy doing other things – mostly, working on my business and fulfilling my duties as Board President at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles. Both of those took (and are still taking) a ton of time and emotional energy. But two years? I was starting to wonder if I’d made a mistake buying a jacquard loom, because I seemed to have very little interest in weaving. But I couldn’t seem to come up with anything that triggered my enthusiasm.

Then two things happened. The first was getting a close look at Itchiku Kubota’s kimono, which are both beautiful and masterful. Conceiving and executing these kimono requires not only vision, but impressive technical skills and deep understanding of the design possibilities of each technique. Years of technical mastery are needed to make them.

This is very different from how most textile artists currently work. Current textile art emphasizes message; it’s about what you’re saying with your art, not about the skill and precision with which the art is made. In fact, too-good construction can even make your work suspect, because good craftsmanship is associated with craft, not art. (Insert the usual arguments about craft vs. art here.)

As a result, most of the textile art I’ve seen recently, while powerful, has been pretty simple, technically speaking. Most of it could be composed by someone with just a few years of experience, and made within a matter of weeks or months. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that style; it’s a perfectly valid approach to art, and it results in some remarkable pieces. It works for a lot of artists.

But it doesn’t work for me. My natural preference is for work that is intricate; that combines multiple media; that requires technical mastery; and that takes many months or years to complete. But I’ve seen relatively little modern work that fits that description. (Except for the American Tapestry Alliance shows, which I love!)

So when I asked a lot of established artists how to study and develop a career as a textile artist, much of their advice on who and what to study came from a body and philosophy of art totally different from what I loved. And I didn’t see my style of work reflected in any of the textile art I’d seen. Technical virtuosity seemed stuck in a past that emphasized skill over creativity; modern art emphasized creativity and downplayed skill. Who was doing the kind of complex, technical art that I wanted to do? Where was my tribe?

Alice Walker, in her essay “Saving the Life that is Your Own: The Importance of Models in the Artist’s Life,” says:

In that story I gathered up the historical and psychological threads of the life my ancestors lived, and in the writing of it I felt joy and strength and my own continuity. I had that wonderful feeling writers get sometimes, not very often, of being with a great many people, ancient spirits, all very happy to see me consulting and acknowledging them, and eager to let me know, through the joy of their presence, that, indeed, I am not alone.

Kubota made my kind of art. Seeing his kimono sent a shock of recognition through me. This is the kind of work I want to do…that intricacy, that breadth of vision, that fusion of multiple disciplines. Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! And – having finally found my tribe – I suddenly felt less alone, and a lot more hopeful.

Another thing that has really encouraged me was a discussion I had recently with a museum curator. We were talking about another jacquard artist’s work, and the person I was talking to said, “You know, I think she did herself a disservice when she decided to limit herself to what could be done on a jacquard loom, as opposed to using whatever technique would help her say what she wanted to say.”

I stopped for a moment, thunderstruck. Oh! Duh!

Because, of course, I had fallen into the same trap. It’s a natural mistake: when you buy a very expensive hammer, it’s hard not to feel that you need to pound a LOT of nails to justify your purchase. So, having bought a jacquard loom, I had naturally been envisioning myself as a jacquard weaver – weaving exquisite pieces that exploited the powerful capabilities of the loom. And focusing on weaving to the exclusion of other disciplines.

But I’ve never been terribly excited about handwoven cloth. (Yes, I know that’s a strange confession for a well-known weaver.) To me, cloth is mainly interesting as a raw material for other processes – dyeing and sewing, maybe origami. And flat cloth? It leaves me, well, flat. Since I had been envisioning jacquard-woven flat wall hangings, is it any surprise that I lost my enthusiasm for starting new work?

The last revelation I’ve had has to do with the question of art vs. artistic career. My style of art is quite different from most of what is currently being exhibited and sold. And because I want to put hundreds or thousands of hours into each piece, building a body of work will be really slow. As a result, taking my approach may seriously impact my career as an artist. I have been noodling unhappily over this for the last two years. Kubota’s kimono have knocked me clean off the fence I was sitting on, because if I can make work like those kimono – or even get close – I do not give a flying fuck about whether I ever have an artistic career.

Which, I think, finally qualifies me to call myself an artist. 🙂

There’s a wonderful passage in Richard Bach’s Illusions that describes how I feel. The protagonist (Richard) has been barnstorming around the Midwest, offering people short airplane rides for a small fee. In the process, he meets the Messiah, whose name is Donald Shimoda. Richard decides he wants to be a Messiah too, so he studies with Donald. In this section, Richard has just given his “Sermon on the Mount” teaching to Donald for the umpteenth time:

I looked at him. “Too wordy?”

“As always. Richard, you are going to lose ninety percent of your audience unless you learn to keep it short!”

“Well, what’s wrong with losing ninety percent of my audience?” I shot back at him. “What’s wrong with losing ALL my audience? I know what I know and I talk what I talk! And if that’s wrong then that’s just too bad. The airplane rides are three dollars, cash!”

“You know what?” Shimoda stood up, brushing the hay off his blue jeans.

“What?” I said petulantly.

“You just graduated. How does it feel to be a Master?”

“Frustrating as hell.”

He looked at me with an infinitesimal smile. “You get used to it,” he said.

Having thought through all that, I have some very exciting ideas for combining jacquard designs with dyeing. In particular, I want to cross-dye jacquard-woven cloth woven from cotton and polyester threads. Cotton and polyester are ideal for this purpose because dyes for cotton (fiber-reactive dyes) do not dye polyester, and dyes for polyester (disperse dyes) do not dye cotton. So you can weave a pattern in white on white, print on the fabric using fiber-reactive dyes, and then dye it in a different design using disperse dyes. The finished piece will show the cotton in the fiber-reactive pattern and the polyester in the disperse-dye pattern.

This is a bit hard to envision, so here is a sample I made a few years ago while playing with this idea. The warp is Tencel (or maybe cotton), the weft is alpaca, and it’s dyed with both acid and fiber-reactive dyes. The pale blue fiber-reactive dye is applied first (it dyes both cotton and protein fiber), then the thickened red-purple acid dye is stenciled on. The acid dye dyes the alpaca but not the silk, giving an interesting pebbled texture. (You can read more about the process in this blog post.)

This is pretty interesting in itself, but throw in a jacquard loom and some really interesting stuff becomes possible. For example: suppose you weave an image of a tree, where the tree is woven in polyester and the background in cotton or mostly-cotton. You can weave the trunk of the tree in a “bark” pattern that is mostly polyester with some textured cotton ridges going through it, and then paint different colors/designs on the polyester and the cotton parts of the bark. You could weave birds in cotton half-hidden against a canopy of polyester leaves. Then you could stencil a pattern of light and dark green on the polyester leaves without touching the birds, and come back and paint the cotton birds later.

Or you could go abstract and do shibori or tied-resist dyeing (twice!). Or you could try to do woven shibori! Depending on thickness, polyester thread may be strong enough to use as tie threads…and polyester has memory, so there is also the option of permanently-set crimp cloth. The possibilities are truly endless, and well worth exploring. This could be a LOT of fun!

Filed Under: All blog posts, musings, textiles, dyeing, surface design, weaving Tagged With: cross dyeing

« Previous Page
Next Page »

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Information resources

  • Dye samples
    • Procion MX fiber-reactive dye samples on cotton
    • How to "read" the dye sample sets
    • Dye sample strategy - the "Cube" method
  • How-Tos
    • Dyeing and surface design
    • Weaving
    • Designing handwoven cloth
    • Sewing

Blog posts

  • All blog posts
    • food
      • chocolate
    • musings
    • textiles
      • dyeing
      • knitting
      • sewing
      • surface design
      • weaving
    • writing

Archives

Photos from my travels

  • Dye samples
    • Procion MX fiber-reactive dye samples on cotton
    • How to "read" the dye sample sets
    • Dye sample strategy - the "Cube" method
  • Travels
    • Thailand
    • Cambodia
    • Vietnam
    • Laos
    • India
    • Ghana
    • China

Travel Blog

Entertaining miscellanies

© Copyright 2016 Tien Chiu · All Rights Reserved ·