Tien Chiu

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Worried

The Fuzz went into the kitty ICU yesterday, which is not good for any cat and positively ominous for a 20-year-old kitty.  I’ve been trying not to stress because he’s in a state-of-the-art hospital and they’re doing everything they can for him, but it’s hard not to.  He’s been with me since I graduated college, and I love him dearly.  But at the same time, it’s impossible to ignore that, at his age, and having suffered from irritable bowel disease for five years, his odds aren’t great.

That said, he’s had a good run, and a good life – very few cats make it to twenty, and he is nearly twenty-one! – so perhaps it’s just his time.  But I am devoutly hoping not.  As I said, we love him dearly and were hoping to celebrate his twenty-first birthday with him in about a month.

At the moment, the vet thinks it’s simple dehydration, brought on by a cold, and they’re rehydrating him via IV.  He did eat something yesterday evening and nibbled a bit today, but he’s still lethargic.  So if you know any kitty gods, say a prayer for him, OK?

Meanwhile, I have been burning off my stress by weaving and gardening.  I have transplanted my precious violets (I love them and have fond childhood memories of them, but they are rare around here, probably because they’re tricky to grow in our climate) and set up an irrigation system for them and for the lemon tree.  I also fertilized the lemon tree, which it probably hasn’t had in ages, and Mike broke up the concrete slab that was smothering the roots:

broken-up concrete slab
broken-up concrete slab

(I’m super impressed: we didn’t rent a jackhammer, Mike just broke it up with a sledgehammer!  Lots of raw muscle involved.  Woot!)

And I finished warping the loom, and wove about 30″ worth of sample:

twill blocks sample
twill blocks sample

The warp is 10/2 cotton, the weft is Henry’s Attic Alpaca Lace.  I’m pleased with this sample, as it shows I guessed the sett correctly: 30 epi for twill, using a weft that’s slightly thinner than the warp.  The squares are square and the cloth looks quite nice.  I plan to use this to illustrate the tradeoffs in design: the bolder the woven pattern, the simpler the dyed shapes should be.

But first I need to confirm that these yarns will dye correctly.  I had a major surprise once where a wool yarn, which was not supposed to dye with fiber-reactive dyes and soda ash, did take the dye – rendering it useless for cross-dyeing.  So before I weave 16 yards of fabric using these two yarns, I’m going to dye a sample.  I will probably do that tonight, assuming The Fuzz is doing well.

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Cross-dyeing designs

I’m starting to prepare for my cross-dyeing experiments.  This time I’m going to put on a 10″ wide warp in 10/2 cotton, and weave it off with Henry’s Attic Alpaca Lace as weft.  The 10/2 cotton is 4200 ypp and the Alpaca Lace is only 4960 ypp, but as the alpaca will fluff up a bit, I’m hoping the difference won’t be too dramatic.  And at only 24-30 epi, it ought to weave up super fast.  I’m still debating how much to put on, but 21 yards sounds about right – enough for ten scarves that are 72″ long (including fringe), or for a couple of scarves and a LOT of samples.  It may not be woven off by the start of the move, but 10/2 cotton is durable enough to move on the loom.  (The AVL Workshop Dobby Loom is designed to allow disassembly/moving with the warp still on the loom.  Go AVL!)

I’m going to thread up on a 24-shaft straight draw, which will allow me to simulate any number of shafts as long as the threading repeat divides neatly into 24.  So I’m going to do some 4-shaft patterns (bird’s-eye twill, 2/2 twill, 1/3 twill), some 8-shaft patterns (crepe weaves, twill blocks), and some 24-shaft patterns (various fancy twills).  I’ll probably also include plain weave.  This will allow me to demonstrate concepts for a lot of different loom types, which is important for this particular article.

The concepts I’m trying to convey are fairly simple.  Basically, you want to limit complex imagery to either weaving draft or the dye pattern: both at once produces muddled looks.  Here are two images from this earlier blog post that illustrate what I mean:

horse, scrunch dyed in turquoise/purple fiber reactive dyes, then stenciled with acid dyes. 3-1 twill with acid dye dominant.
horse, scrunch dyed in turquoise/purple fiber reactive dyes, then stenciled with acid dyes. 3-1 twill with acid dye dominant.

This is successful because it is a complex design with a simple background.

Contrast it with this:

horse, scrunch dyed with turquoise and purple fiber-reactive dye and then stenciled with acid dye in fuchsia. Complex patterning in weave structure.
horse, scrunch dyed with turquoise and purple fiber-reactive dye and then stenciled with acid dye in fuchsia. Complex patterning in weave structure.

Here the complex patterning in both weave structure and dye job collide, and you get visual mud.

And here is a simple pattern with a complex weave structure:

complex weave structure, simple figures in acid and fiber-reactive dyes.
complex weave structure, simple figures in acid and fiber-reactive dyes.

Anyway, those are the main concepts I want to illustrate, but I also want to do some more experimenting first.  There are so many things to try!

Off to the house!  I need to water the herb plants, which I didn’t get into the ground yesterday.  I think I’ll try to do them tomorrow (I already have a commitment for tonight).

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Cross dyed samples

I’m continuing to process the cross dyed samples (tencel warp, alpaca weft, dyed in fiber-reactive and then in acid dyes).  About half of them are finished, the other half will be discharged and redyed in some fashion.

Here are some of the results so far:

horse, scrunch dyed in turquoise/purple fiber reactive dyes, then stenciled with acid dyes. 3-1 twill with acid dye dominant.
horse, scrunch dyed in turquoise/purple fiber reactive dyes, then stenciled with acid dyes. 3-1 twill with acid dye dominant.

This looks pretty good; the background provides texture but is not too intrusive.

This, on the other hand, doesn’t work well at all:

horse, scrunch dyed with turquoise and purple fiber-reactive dye and then stenciled with acid dye in fuchsia. Complex patterning in weave structure.
horse, scrunch dyed with turquoise and purple fiber-reactive dye and then stenciled with acid dye in fuchsia. Complex patterning in weave structure.

The background pattern is so complex, and so high-contrast, that you can barely make out the horse.

My favorite horse pattern is actually this one:

horse, scrunch dyed with turquoise and purple fiber-reactive dye and then stenciled with acid dye in fuchsia. Crepe weave.
horse, scrunch dyed with turquoise and purple fiber-reactive dye and then stenciled with acid dye in fuchsia. Crepe weave.

The crepe weave is my unexpected favorite for the dyed samples.  I hadn’t expected much out of it, but it gives a complex textured background that has just enough additional contrast to provide an interesting background (vs. the 2-2 and 1-3 twills, which aren’t visually very interesting).  But it’s not powerful enough to overwhelm, even when faced with a complex and delicate figure.

Here it is again, without the figure:

crepe weave, scrunch dyed in turquoise and purple fiber-reactive dyes, then scrunch dyed in fuchsia and burgundy acid dyes
crepe weave, scrunch dyed in turquoise and purple fiber-reactive dyes, then scrunch dyed in fuchsia and burgundy acid dyes

I really like the “textured” look of the crepe weave, even without a strong image.

Meanwhile, here are a few high-contrast woven patterns with low-contrast dye jobs:

various high contrast weave patterns on low contrast dye jobs
various high contrast weave patterns on low contrast dye jobs

These are all pretty successful.  Later I am going to try discharging and re-dyeing an image on top of some of them.

Here is a pair of low-contrast dye jobs on a relatively humdrum background:

2-2 twill, scrunch dyed in turquoise/purple fiber reactive dye and then scrunch dyed in red/burgundy acid dyes
2-2 twill, scrunch dyed in turquoise/purple fiber reactive dye and then scrunch dyed in red/burgundy acid dyes

I like this one as well, though I would probably use it as the background for an image rather than use sizable chunks of it as-is.

This, on the other hand, is not successful – there is simply too much going on.  The eye doesn’t know where to look first, or where to rest!  So (not too surprisingly) high-contrast dyejobs don’t mix too well with busy backgrounds.

arashi shibori fiber-reactive dye in purple and black, followed by scrunch-dyeing in red/purple acid dye. Complex weave pattern.
arashi shibori fiber-reactive dye in purple and black, followed by scrunch-dyeing in red/purple acid dye. Complex weave pattern.

And, finally, two simple stenciled images:

fuchsia fiber-reactive dye, then stenciled again with red and yellow acid dyes. Because it is a 3-1 twill with the tencel side up, the fiber-reactive maple leaf is dominant and the acid dye appears as a "ghost".
fuchsia fiber-reactive dye, then stenciled again with red and yellow acid dyes.

This one (above) is interesting because of the “ghost image”.  It is a 3-1 twill with the cellulose side dominant, so the fuchsia fiber-reactive dye appears as a strong image, whereas the red acid dye is much less obvious, more like a shadow.  This could be used in designing.

And this one I like because the complex weave structure adds interest to the simple image, without dominating:

complex weave structure, simple figures in acid and fiber-reactive dyes.
complex weave structure, simple figures in acid and fiber-reactive dyes.

That’s it so far!  More to come later in the week (or over the weekend), when I have a chance to finish the discharged-and-redyed samples.

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Cross-dyeing magic, part I

I have now completed the first round of dyeing (fiber-reactive).  It was magical.  I started with fabric that was nearly white, like this:

undyed fabric
undyed fabric

…and when I dyed it, like magic, a rich, beautiful pattern appeared!

fiber-reactive dye swatch, scrunch-dyed in brown and black
fiber-reactive dye swatch, scrunch-dyed in brown and black

Here are a few more swatches:

fiber-reactive dyes: scrunch-dyed in turquoise and purple
fiber-reactive dyes: scrunch-dyed in turquoise and purple
fiber reactive dye: arashi shibori
fiber reactive dye: arashi shibori
fiber-reactive dye: stenciled maple leaf
fiber-reactive dye: stenciled maple leaf

(Yes, you are reading “Hello World” in that swatch.  What can I say, I’m a geek!)

Keep in mind that these are only half the story.  I will be overdyeing with acid dyes later this week, to dye the other half of the fabric – and am eager to see what happens!

Meanwhile, in shibori workshop-land, I have completed some more samples of stitched shibori:

stitched shibori triangles
stitched shibori triangles
stitched shibori, orange circles, stitched on fold
stitched shibori, orange circles, stitched on fold
stitched shibori, mokume style, stitched on bias
stitched shibori, mokume style, stitched on bias
stitched shibori, wavy lines
stitched shibori, wavy lines

The fabric in the stitched shibori, by the way, is more of the alpaca/tencel fabric, this time dyed in rust brown and gold, which “averages out” to a rust orange.  However, the fabric has more depth and variation than a single-fiber fabric…perhaps not obvious in the photo, but pretty neat in person.

This week will be a fairly quiet week, as the cotton-wrapped polyester thread I ordered (from Atlanta Thread) will take several days to arrive.  I plan to finish the acid dyeing, which will take a few days, and take some quiet time, cleaning up the studio and maybe reading a few of those books I have piled up!

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Simulation, and sample prep

It has occurred to me that perhaps I don’t have to do double weave for my devore.  In fact, I’ll get a more interesting effect if I weave a separate fabric to hang behind the devore, and just tack them loosely together in spots so the two layers can shift slightly as the wearer moves.  This will give additional “motion” and variation to the leaf motifs, and will free me from some of the constraints imposed by using double weave.  Currently I am visualizing something like this:

simulation of handwoven and cross-dyed devore leaves, two layers
simulation of handwoven and cross-dyed devore leaves, two layers

(You’ll have to imagine the layers shifting as the wearer moves.)

The top layer is the white and beige wavy pattern, burned out in areas to reveal the brightly colored bottom layer.  Cross-dyeing will allow me to have the different leaf colors, and of course it is easy to change structures in sections of the fabric as long as the threading remains the same – so I can have wholly different patterns in each of the leaves.  I’ll almost certainly use different weave structures, but you get the idea.

(I posted to a couple of mailing lists, by the way, and found out the correct name for the technique I’ve been calling “differential dyeing” is actually “cross-dyeing”.   So that’s what I’ll use from now on.)

Actual weaving of samples is on hold, alas, until I get some cotton-wrapped polyester thread in.  As the cheapest source I’ve found is in Georgia, it may take some time for it to arrive.

Meanwhile…

I have finished weaving off the 13-yard tencel warp, mostly in alpaca weft, in eight or nine patterns.  I have decided to cut up my samples, which are mostly 12×18″ after wet-finishing, into eight swatches approximately 6×4.5″, and do eight test-dyes on each sample.

Here are the eight things I want to try:

  1. Low contrast fiber-reactive and low-contrast acid dye
    1. Scrunch-dye in turquoise and blue fiber-reactive dye
    2. Scrunch-dye in fuchsia and fuchsia-violet acid dye
  2. High contrast fiber-reactive, low-contrast acid dye
    1. Arashi shibori in fiber-reactive dye, blue
    2. Scrunch-dye in fuchsia and fuchsia-violet acid dye
  3. High-contrast fiber reactive, high contrast acid
    1. Arashi shibori in fiber-reactive dye, blue
    2. Solid color acid turquoise dyebath
    3. Arashi shibori in fuchsia dye
  4. Imagery: low contrast fiber-reactive background, simple figure on low-contrast background in acid dyes
    1. Scrunch-dye in brown and black fiber-reactive dye
    2. Scrunch dye yellow and red acid dyes
    3. Stencil brown maple leaf (inverse or regular) with acid dyes
  5. Imagery: low-contrast fiber-reactive background, complex figure in acid dyes
    1. Scrunch-dye in turquoise and blue fiber-reactive dye
    2. Stencil horse or silkscreen running tiger in acid dyes
  6. Imagery: simple figure in fiber-reactive dyes overlapping simple figure in acid dyes
    1. Stencil inverse maple leaf in color turquoise, fiber-reactive
    2. Stencil maple leaf in color fuchsia, fiber-reactive
    3. Stencil inverse maple leaf, overlapping, in color purple, acid
    4. stencil maple leaf in color yellow, overlapping, acid
  7. Imagery: simple figure in discharge paste on a complex background
    1. Scrunch-dye in turquoise and blue fiber-reactive dye
    2. Scrunch-dye in fuchsia and purple acid dye
    3. Apply discharge paste using DIFFERENT maple leaf stencil, discharge color
    4. Using dye stencil, stencil in yellow/red in fiber-reactive and acid dye
  8. Imagery: complex figure in discharge paste on simple background
    1. Scrunch-dye in turquoise and blue fiber-reactive dye
    2. Scrunch-dye in fuchsia and purple acid dye
    3. Apply discharge paste using DIFFERENT complex stencil (a second running tiger?), discharge
    4. Dye (or not) using contrasting colors, as appropriate.

I spent this afternoon writing up detailed instructions for myself, so I’ll be able to work efficiently once I get started.  I also cut most of the samples up into squares – eight fairly complex patterns plus a 3/1 twill and a 2/2 twill will give me eight dye patterns on ten weave structures, for a total of 80 samples from this batch.  (The mind reels!)

Anyway, tomorrow’s primary focus will be finishing the first dye run, which will be fiber-reactive dyes.  There will be a total of five dye/discharge processes in this set of samples – fiber reactive, followed by acid, followed by discharge, followed by redyeing one set of samples with both acid and fiber-reactive dyes.  So I expect this to take me all week.  Complicated, but fun.