My weaving is getting very interesting at the moment. I wove this shibori pleat fabric a couple of years ago using Jo Anne Ryeburn’s creative instructions in Handwoven but it over felted as I forgot about it in the washing machine and although it looked very interesting it was only useful for a belt not a draping fabric.

This time I’ve modified the pattern, adding a plain weave selvedge and I’m using 20/1 wool/lycra for the shibori wefts. The warp is 30/2 tencel and 60/2 silk ground weft.The result is shown at the left. I will also cross dye the wefts.

I decided I wanted much deeper furrows so have now modified the pattern up to 24 shafts. Although the more shafts the better, I think there are ways to make a similar fabric with less shafts. You just need a very steep point twill. Joanne included an 8 shaft version in September/October 2002 Handwoven.

I’ve added the beautiful native Australian flower, just because I can. I read of someone who named the the local flowers with her own names, which I thought made a lot of sense. Otherwise, like me, you feel inadequate because you don’t know the ‘agreed’ latin name for it, or if you do you forget it all the time. It’s much nicer to have your own poetic naming system. Now that’s given me an idea. The struggle with naming and folder management of weave designs…be more creative and less focused on rigidity and convention.

The Mad Weave

Do you have to be mad to weave…I think so. This is an example of mad weave. Seems it is also called Malaccan weave and triaxial weave. Normally weaving has two elements – warp and weft. Tiaxial weave has an additional third element.

I started this basket with instructions from Shereen LaPlantz book "The Mad Weave Book". It is an authorised copy of her book sold by The Caning Shop. The illustrations are great and easy to follow, especially when you consider the complexity of the structure. It’s the sort of thing that is probably easy to show but not so easy to write.

Basically it is a twill weave of over one, under two, followed by a third weaver interlacing. It’s fun to do but I always seem to have trouble weaving things into container shapes. It’s a struggle and it can’t really be left incomplete. It insists on completion. It insists on patience and perserverence.

The Online Weavers computer workshop is developing all sorts of new ideas using filters and various photos for inspiration.

Basically I start with a photo. For the top image I used a photo of my own textiles, then modified it with filters and colour adjustments. I’m then able to cut and paste slices of the design into a new canvas. For the top image I used a profile draft image from Fiberworks to create the little diamond shaped Hmong motifs and I used a separate canvas to create the black and white striping, then pasted the stripes into the image.

But wait! there’s more. You don’t really need an original image at all.
As you can see at this site you can start off with just a cloud effect then render, colour and filter it like mad. I also tried Haberdash textile filters on the bottom two designs. The purple one is just the inverted colour of the green one.

Are they weaveable? I think this process has many functions. One is purely for inspiration, to develop colour and texture ideas to base a design on. Another is to develop an idea based on your knowledge of weaving ‘rules’. These rules will be different for everyone depending on the type of loom you have. For example the black and white stripes in the first photo would be made using a warp faced (very close sett) textile with one end black one end white. The coloured sections would require warp painting or some type of inlay. The diamond Hmong motifs would be picked up by hand or loom controlled if you have enough shafts.

This image is based on the Clown photo from yesterday’s post.

What if I could take an actual weaving pattern out of PCW Fiberworks and use it as a layer in the photo editing?

How I got the weaving pattern out of PCW Fiberworks:

In Fiberworks, I just opened up a pattern and set the zoom to a pleasing appearance on screen (not too small or too large).

Then pressed the PRINT SCREEN key on the keyboard which copies the screen shot into that invisible clipboard (there are no bells when this happens just silence).

I then opened Photoshop and a new canvas (File>New>OK). Then Edit>Paste for the weaving pattern to appear. You then have to select the pattern only (not the threading/treadling) and crop it to size.

This image on the left requires a program like Photoshop which can create multiple layers with different images on them (Gimp may also have this). It is then possible to change the opacity of the images so that one can show through the other .

The Online Weavers computer workshop is continuing and here is my new addition. Taking the top brightly coloured clown photo I was able to emulate a watery ikat textile with Photoshop. This type of playing around doesn’t take long once you’ve discovered some of the tools to make it happen.

For this image I cut and pasted some rectangular segments of the first image into a new canvas. I then treated these with filters – noise, followed by wind blast. I then interspersed plain coloured and gradient coloured stripes (actually elongated rectanges) into the image. Some of the colours here have been picked up with the eyedropper tool from the original image. The wind filter had an unexpected result breaking the image up at the sides which gave a weft ikat look. What fun! Thanks Leigh.

I’ve had a couple of questions about my makeshift method of weighting when using the trapeze for winding the warp (thanks Laritza and Leigh). Here’s a close up photo of the situation. Knotted plastic shopping bag from anywhere containing dumbells. A S hook is added and is secured to the warp chain.

The only problem with this method is its difficulty in sliding the weights down. I have to reset the warp chain each time.See Vavstuga for a video of a trapeze with a very sleek weight sliding. Anyway, refinement will come along after the trapeze is ‘tested’ for usefulness…maybe.

This is the first time I’ve used the roof trapeze for warping my loom. This rather long (12 metre) warp is winding on successfully, but I can’t really know until I thread and tie everything up.

For weights I’ve used dumbells in plastic bags which I move on every so often.I’ve also discovered a problem with the way the separators are placed on my sectional warp beam. The centre of the loom is in the middle of one of those 1" sections rather than a section marker being the centre as it is on my countermarche loom. This is a problem when I wind 2 warp chains as I have to split them to fit into the centre section. It’s difficult to explain but so many things like this happen in weaving, and it’s next to impossible to know everything you need when you get a new loom. It’s like the first time of everything – you just do it or buy it or whatever. Then after a while you KNOW what you want or expect and you get fussier.Perhaps because you don’t want to change what you KNOW.

Life is going to be very busy over the next few months for me with work and family commitments but I have a few full weaving days now. I hope to explore my weaving software more, including ArahWeave (run on Red Hat OS). I’m also involved in an Exhibition "Thread Bare" in February 08 and have to prepare an Introductory workshop in Coiled Basketry in a few weeks time.

On the blog hunting, I’m happy that the Armidale Spinners and Weavers Guild has a great blog style site powered by wordpress. This group seem very active and I’m sure lots more luscious fibre photos will appear there.

My makeshift weights

I’m thrilled to be doing the current Computer Design workshop at the Online Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers with Leigh Tate. I don’t know what I’m looking to achieve so I’m just going to have fun. I’m using Photoshop, mainly because I have it and want to use it more. [I normally use Fireworks for my photo editing here.] However, Leigh has us also using on-line photo editors such as Cellsea or downloading GIMP.

Teaching computer programs to such a diverse group of creatives can’t be easy as there are many different operating systems and set ups on individual computers combined with everyone having different experiences with computers. But Leigh is doing a wonderful job. I’ve jumped in ahead a bit to ‘have a go’ with photoshop but I await Leigh’s further lessons eagerly. Just the filters in photo editing are capable of creating ideas. However, because I work with loom woven textile design I think I may try to create a profile template to overlay on my editing. I especially like the way I can use it for developing Ikat designs. Photoshop also has lots of tools that change the colours instantly which is better than any weaving software I have – at least for loose design ideas.

Here I used a Charcoal and Chalk
filter directly on the above image, cropped the image, then
cut and pasted strips of the image.
I then enlarged the canvas of the image and added other lines and blocks to emulate woven structures. Finally I copied the whole thing ‘2 up’ to
create a new textile.

The five shibori wraps that I have just woven are now going through the multiple dye processes I have planned for them.The natural 60/2 silk weft is being dyed with Landscape dyes which ONLY affect the silk and not the tencel warp.

As you can see in the photos I’m now pulling up the shibori threads for the next cellulose fibre reactive dye bath. All this dyeing is very exciting and colourful.

With one of the wraps I’ve bypassed the second dyeing altogether and put the shibori tied piece directly in the Landscape dyebath to see how it goes. This means that the shibori will only affect the silk weft threads but leave the warp colours and some of the natural silk intact.

Christmas was full of activity and visits. First our daughters arrived, Michelle and Teresa with Dave her boyfriend then my brother and his wife arrived with Darby and Lewis in tow to delight us at every turn.

So not much time or inclination for weaving temporarily! I start back today with a new warp to put on the loom. Thankfully we have had a cool Christmas, but I doubt whether this will last. The heat just drains the energy out of everything.

The Online Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers will start a computer weaving course soon so hopefully I can be on board for that.