textiles | Tien Chiu's Blog

April 12, 2020 by Tien Chiu 9 Comments

Unexpected results

Today I’m giving thanks for my methodical, always-sample-first approach!

I was considering the “Just Do It” approach and just diving into dyeing my warp. But a little voice said, “Mixed fibers – you don’t know what will happen!” So I wound and dyed a small test swatch first. And boy howdy, am I glad I did!

Here’s the effect I was after – the fuchsia and green swatch on the right:

navy blue and fuchsia/green tie-dyed swatches

Here are the colors I used:

four dye swatches - fuchsia and green on top

And here is what I wound up with, after dyeing:

Yarn sample in fuchsia, salmon, and purple, with just a little bit of green

I’ve got lovely shades of fuchsia, purple, and pinky-orange, but where did the green go??

Here’s what I’m pretty sure happened.

The fuchsia struck equally well on both cotton and silk. No problem there.

The yellow struck preferentially on one fiber (I suspect the silk). It got zooped up immediately, leaving none for the other fiber.

The blue either attached preferentially to the other fiber (I think the cotton), OR the fuchsia and yellow hit first, and saturated out the dye sites on the silk (silk has fewer bonding sites than cotton), leaving nowhere for the blue to attach. So only one fiber got the blue dye.

The end result: the blue only dyed one fiber and the yellow only dyed one fiber. The fuchsia dyed both fibers. So I wound up with fuchsia in the areas I dabbed with fuchsia, a mix of salmon (fuchsia+yellow) and purple (fuchsia+blue) in the areas where fuchsia mixed with green, and blue and yellow and a teeny-tiny bit of green in the areas that were pure green.

Since I deliberately made most of the areas a mix of fuchsia and green (I didn’t want a whole lot of green), that meant that I wound up with a LOT of fuchsia-and-purple and almost no green.

So that idea is DOA. Good thing I sampled first!

At this point I have a few options:

I can try to get green from a different mix of dyes. There are four “pure” blues in the MX dyes and two yellows. A different combo may produce a green less inclined to “break” into component dyes. I’m a bit skeptical of this since I’ve heard all the blues are slower-striking than all the yellows, but it might be worth a try.

I can change the colors I’m trying to achieve. This seems like a sounder approach. If I use a single “pure” dye, or two more closely related colors than magenta and green (which are color-wheel opposites), I’ll probably get less chaos. If I want to see my pattern clearly, it would be good to use two colors of similar values (darkness). I’ll have to think about what colors, though, and of course do considerable sampling. I may be back to my favorite color combination, blue and orange-red, again. Not the worst of color combinations (I mean, it’s my favorite for a reason), but I’d kind of like to experiment with something different, too.

Whatever I do, though, I’ll definitely have to sample. Doing a mixed fiber warp is complicating things more than I’d expected. But that just makes it more fun!

April 8, 2020 by Tien Chiu 1 Comment

Double weave cape

I’m moving along on my new project. I’ve decided it will be a cape, Vogue 8959:

The version she’s wearing requires 4.25 yards of 45″ fabric, or 3 yards of 60″ fabric. I could do a longer, floor length version that would require 7 yards of 45″ fabric or 6 yards of 60″ fabric, according to the pattern. Of course, since my warp is only 29″ wide, I’ll have to weave double the yardage.

I haven’t yet decided whether to do the floor length or the knee length version. Since I’m impatient to get started, I decided to weave first and ask questions later, so I wound a 20-yard warp, 29″ wide, which should be more than enough to sample, weave all the yardage for the floor-length version, and have plenty left over. If I do the shorter version, I’m sure I can come up with uses for the extra warp.

Because I wanted interesting color variation in the dyed yarns, I wound the warp with three different fibers: silk, mercerized cotton, and unmercerized cotton. They will take up the dyes differently, producing a slightly variegated effect even using the exact same dyes. I also used slightly different yarn sizes. The silk is 30/2 silk at 7500 yards per pound; the cotton yarns are 20/2 cotton at 8400 yards per pound, slightly thinner. They’re mixed throughout the warp, though, so the difference in thickness shouldn’t become a tension issue. It will just add a tiny bit of physical texture to the warp.

Here’s a pic of the warp being wound on my 3-meter warping mill:

20 yard warp being wound on my warping mill

There are actually two warps, since the piece will be double weave. Grace is threaded and sett at 90 epi, which means any warp that goes onto the loom needs to be sett at 90 ends per inch. Practically speaking, that means it either needs to be an incredibly fine-threads warp (half the weight of sewing thread) or double weave. Fine threads can be finicky, so I’m voting for double weave.

Since I’m doing double weave, I need to wind and dye two warp bouts. I’ve decided to dye one in mottled fuchsia and forest green, and the other in mottled indigo blue and navy blue. I’m currently planning to use an orange weft for both, but I want to do a lot of testing before I settle on a final color.

Here are the dye swatches for the colors I’m planning to use for the warp:

I did do a quick simulation of what the colors might look like once woven. These colors are striped rather than splotchy because that’s all the weaving software can do, but it gives an idea of how the colors might blend visually:

color simulations — simulation of fuchsia and green threads with an orange weft

The finished cloth will not look anything like this, but at least it gives me a starting-point for thinking about the piece.

I’ve finished winding both warp bouts. Next step is to dye a small test bout in the fuchsia and forest green, both to test my dyeing technique and to see how the colors blend on the different fiber types. If I have time, I’ll do that today.

March 28, 2020 by Tien Chiu Leave a Comment

Inside out, upside down – new inspiration?

The world has changed.

I haven’t written anything for the last month and a half – first because I was too busy with business things, then because somehow everything I was working on seemed irrelevant with the entire world coming apart at the seams. But I feel I should catch you up on where I am!

I wove some more samples on the tiger project, but overall I found it very frustrating. I’m having technical problems with the warp – the leftmost four inches on one warp beam are coming out significantly looser than the rest of the warp, and evening out tension between the two warp beams is proving to be a devil of a challenge. I’ve been in touch with Tronrud Engineering about it and it looks like it may be a bug in the software; they’re working on it, but with everything shut down it may be awhile. They did suggest a workaround, but it won’t work for my particular situation.

Meanwhile, I’ve tried several weft combinations for the tiger and have not been satisfied with any of them. At this point, I’ve basically decided to remove the current warp and replace it with a new one, something that will be less frustrating to work with. It will need to be 2,640 threads and sett at 90 epi, because that’s how the loom is threaded and rethreading would be an unimaginable task (OMG never again – that’s what I bribed Ricki for!). And after all that black, I’m craving COLOR!

So I have been surfing the web looking for inspiration. I’ve decided I want to work with painted warps – more specifically, a double weave warp with two painted warps in different colorways. At the moment, I’m thinking fuchsia and forest green for one warp, and indigo and cerulean blue for the other. Kinda like in these two tie-dyed shirts:

indigo and forest green/fuchsia tie-dyed shirts

The photos aren’t quite true to color, but you get the idea. The warps wouldn’t be painted in nice neat linear fashion, but coiled up randomly and dye sprinkled and scrunched on until the warp was thoroughly soaked. There would be a lot of blending of colors, so the warp wouldn’t be “pure” fuschia or “pure” green in most areas but a blend between the two.

I also plan to use different fibers – probably silk, mercerized cotton, and unmercerized cotton – so the threads absorb the dyes differently. The result should be something similar to what I got for my piece Bipolar Prison:

Bipolar Prison was woven with three different fibers: two strands of mercerized 16/2 cotton, one strand of 20/2 silk, and one strand of 10/2 unmercerized cotton. The warp was coiled up randomly and then sprinkled randomly with dye. One warp was dyed in yellow/orange/red and the other in blue/green/purple. The fibers absorbed the dyes differently, producing a mottled effect even in areas where all the fibers got the exact same dyes. I really like the effect.

In Bipolar Prison, I used analogous colors so the color blends would remain bright. In this new warp, I’d deliberately blend the complementary colors magenta and green – color-wheel opposites – to create a range of dull colors in between. I find that blending complementary colors generally creates a far more interesting color range than blending colors that are close together on the color wheel.

Of course there are a ton of design decisions to be made above and beyond warp colors. There are a million things I could do with patterning – the patterning of which warp is on top, the pattern of how that warp interlaces with the weft, the color of the weft. I could knit a blank and make the weft change color, too. Oooo! (she squeals, delighted) But first things first. First you decide on the project, and figure out the warp. Designing the rest of that can come later.

I haven’t yet decided what to make in this new project. I’m still auditioning ideas. But for the first time in years, the idea of making clothing sounds appealing. I thought I’d sworn off clothing forever – but maybe not. Tomorrow I’ll go looking for fashion inspiration. I’m thinking a dress or a coat. Time to go surf the web for fashion porn. 🙂

February 15, 2020 by Tien Chiu 3 Comments

Tigers and textures

I’m now on to considering my next piece. I want to play with textures, and am considering a tiger in matelassé – with brushed silk/mohair or silk chenille in the furry parts. Sensuous? Absolutely! I want to make a piece that just begs to be touched.

I’m half-thinking of entering it for Complexity – half-thinking because the deadline is 28 days away and there is only a sliver of a chance that I’ll actually finish the piece within 28 days, plus I really don’t enjoy rushing through the design process, plus Complexity has a rule against publishing the finished piece anywhere (including social media and, of course, this blog) prior to Complexity that I think is just plain stupid.

I suppose the idea is to give the show exclusivity – “If you want to see this piece you must come to the show!” – but frankly, free publicity is a lot more useful in getting people to a show. (Speaking as someone who spent two years as Board President at a textiles museum – and is currently Board VP there – we’d be delighted if people shared pieces from our upcoming shows with “Come see this at the upcoming show at the Museum!” Obscurity is a much bigger threat than people having seen a piece online.)

But, since half the fun of creating a piece is sharing the process and the finished piece with you-all, not being able to show the piece on my blog until four months later takes half the fun out of making it in the first place. So, considering whether to push the deadline, and considering whether I want to enter even if I do make the deadline. Grumble.

Anyway, off my soapbox.

For this next piece, I want to play with textures, because that’s what the Complex Weavers Designing Fabrics Study Group, to which I belong, is studying this year. You may recall that, a few blog posts ago, I was considering a horse in matelassé, which is a double weave structure with a thick, fluffy weft passing between the layers. The layers are stitched together in some areas and not in others, producing a puffy effect in areas where the layers are not stitched together and a flattened look in the areas where the layers are stitched together.

Like this:

I’ve since ditched the idea of the horse, and am now considering doing a tiger, with either a brushed silk/mohair weft or a silk chenille weft, using this tiger drawing from iStockPhoto (original drawing by daikokeubisu, modified by me):

The background would be a pebbly, black-and-white crepe or granite weave (mostly white) in cotton and silk, flat. The rocks would be black, puffed areas, black cotton (smooth cloth). The orange and white areas of the tiger would be woven in shaded satins with either silk chenille or brushed silk/kid mohair yarn (dyed rusty orange or left white), and be puffy matelasse. The black parts of the tiger would be kept flat, and probably be woven with smooth yarns to keep the textural contrast as high as possible. I think if I use a furry yarn for the black stripes I would lose the 3D effect of the matelassé.

It’s possible I could complete this in 28 days – the design is not challenging, it’s mostly technically complicated. This would be a three-and-a-half layer weave – two layers of fabric to weave the image, plus a third layer for the matelassé backing, plus a fourth “layer” for the stuffing weft, which passes between the layers without interacting with them but needs to be accounted for in the treadling. However, the Arahweave design software makes this kind of design (relatively) easy, so I could conceivably do the design fairly quickly.

Of course, I’d also have to do samples, dye the yarn, and weave the piece using five shuttles. (Black smooth weft, white smooth weft, orange furry weft, white furry weft, puffy stuffing weft.) So, we’ll see.

January 31, 2020 by Tien Chiu 8 Comments

Seasons of Creativity

I am pleased to present, at last: Seasons of Creativity!

It’s hard to make out many details in a photo that small (the actual piece is 28″ x 63″), so I suggest clicking on the small photo to get the full-resolution photo, then zooming in.

Also, here are a few closeups:

And here’s a close-up of some of the butterflies near the end:

The photos, alas, do not really capture the piece. There are subtle color changes in the background, which has speckles of deep coffee brown, then burgundy, eggplant, navy, and finally black, plus glittering rainbow flecks of whatever wefts aren’t weaving on the surface. There is golden glitter in the background on the far left, beneath the brilliant yellow leaves, and there is silver glitter in the background on the far right, beneath the iridescent and sparkly butterflies. None of this, unfortunately, is captured by the camera, though you can get a few glimmers in the close-up.

So…come to Convergence to see it! It will be there, one way or another – if it doesn’t get into the mixed-media exhibit, I’ll bring it as my piece for the teachers’ exhibit.

The official photo shoot is this weekend, and hopefully I’ll have better photos to offer after that. I’ll swap them into this blog post once they’re ready.

Meanwhile, enjoy a few time-lapse photos of the frenzied two weeks I spent weaving Seasons of Creativity (there’s a reason I wasn’t posting anything!):

70 quills of weft for Seasons of Creativity — All 2.66 miles of weft yarns for Seasons of Creativity. Four hand-painted wefts, each created from multiple strands of superfine yarns, took over 30 hours to prepare before weaving even started!

The first few inches of weaving. I used five shuttles through most of the piece, which took about 20 hours to weave.

leaf section of Seasons of Creativity, on the loom — Deep into the leaves. I took a new photo every time I had to reload the shuttles with a new set of quills – about every 5 inches.

Weaving the last few leaves of Seasons of Creativity — It was surprisingly depressing to weave the last few leaves of Seasons of Creativity and descend into darkness, even though I knew that the stars and butterflies were coming up soon.

Starting to weave the stars in Seasons of Creativity — The beginning of the stars, and the ascent into light and freedom.

Weaving the butterflies in Seasons of Creativity — The butterflies starting to burst forth. The first few butterflies were all green or yellow-green, and I nearly panicked when I saw that the next quill of weft was also slated to be yellow-green. I quickly swapped it out with yellow-orange to give more color variety, and all was well.

Near-final butterflies for Seasons of Creativity — Here the butterflies are getting larger, and I’m preparing to launch into the last set of butterflies. I was weaving like a maniac at this point because my friend Carla was visiting from the East Coast and I wanted to finish in time to show the piece to her!

And, of course, as soon as I finished, I pulled the piece off the loom and spread it out on the bed to take a snapshot to share with you. Which led, inevitably, to this photo:

Because every photo is better with a cat!

So apologies for the lengthy hiatus – I had to wait until I could hang it in a ~~cat-free~~ cat-deprived environment to shoot a photo, and those are hard to come by around here! But I hope it was worth the wait.

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