Aug
20
2010
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Struggling with a dilemma….well probably one that others have solved first. But when you are thinking of how to solve problems yourself it feels like you’re the first. Like an adventure without leaving the house.My problem is all that white yarn in my stashed supplies. It’s so difficult to get the range of colours that seem so available in other countries. This is why I dye most of my yarn and I’m always trying to avoid ‘double skeining’. That is winding a skein up, dyeing it, then winding a package or cone ready to wind into a warp. Notice the word ‘wind’ occuring too much in the sentence.Mostly I use a combination of fibres to get around this and do the final dye with the woven piece. But what about the type of echo weave here. One thread of each colour works best on this weave. The other advantange is that I will be able to add ‘abrash‘ to each dyed yarn as I paint it.The problem: how can I dye these and use my AVL warping wheel to wind the warp onto the loom? |
Firstly the warp calcs:
I decided on 672 ends in total. This means 42 ends per section (my sections are 2cms) I will require 16 sections in total to equal the required 672 ends. (16 x 42 = 672 )
Of those 42 ends there are 3 different colour which equates to 14 ends per colour. The colours above are purple (14 ends per section to be dyed) Black (14 ends to be wound but I already have black), and pinkish (14 ends per section to be dyed).
This means creating 16 separate warps with 42 ends for each colour. HOWEVER, I have to separate these clearly so that, after dyeing, I will place the 3 x 16 end warps (one purple, one black, one pinkish) all together back onto the warping wheel to be wound onto the sectional warp beam.
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| Here is how I layed each of the warps. I was using 2/20 tencel and laid each section through the reed as 2/2/3/2/2/3 |
Up close, see each section is taped off securely and the next section wound on top. 16 sections all shown here. |
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Cutting the warp off the warping wheel. |
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Securing both ends ready for dyeing.
Do you think my plan will work?
I hope it does…it will be worth it if 1) I don’t have to wind so many times 2) I can get colours I want without having to search the world. 3) I can create ‘abrash’ in echo weave. |
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Aug
20
2010
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At last…I’ve finished the Pics to Picks project. I completed two scarves and dyed each a differerent shade of purple/violet. Very different from the loom look here.
The bamboo is lovely, providing a ‘grab’ in the fabric which suits a wrapping scarf. |
Aug
05
2010
Jiowanna Dau Miles teaching us the essentials of tapa cloth making. I was fortunate to buy the cloth below which was made by Jiowanna. I like to buy from the maker … it means more to me. |
The Talking Tapa workshop on Bark cloth from the Pacific was fantastic. Held at the Manning Art Gallery, this free demonstration and hands on workshop allowed us to explore a little known art and textile technique in Australia.
The inner bark from a type of mulberry tree is beaten, sometimes for long periods, producing a finer and finer cloth. You can see the tutor Jiowanna Dau Miles with a beater specifically designed by the wood craftsmen in Fiji.
The stencilled decorative elements on the cloth were cut with xray film and were ‘mix and match’ design styles which could be build in different ways to create quite complex looking patterns.
The stenciling was so engaging as we used our fingers without gloves, and it washed out immediately. The carrier liquid for the dyes was made from mangrove root. We firstly dipped the sponge into this then into an ochre powder or one from the soot of the burnt candle nut (agathis vitensis) to paint on the stencil. |
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Old stencils from natural materials. |
New type stencils with xray film. |
Aug
01
2010
Although I’ve been busy doing non-textile things 
I’m still in there gearing up for new design and teaching ideas in weave.
A game using random weave ideas to build textile innovation by Ann Sutton (Ideas in Weaving – Sutton and Sheehan) has always inspired me (just as anything Ann Sutton has done) and I recently converted my homemade cardboard make dos with some lovely new cards from moo. As I had 100 unique card opportunites with moo printers, I added some extra ideas and modified some of Anns to incorporate some new yarns and new techniques.
For example, new to the mix is some emotions…passion, jealousy, confusion and seasons… winter. What ideas do these words conjure up in relation to weave textiles?
The idea is to choose several cards from the pack and ‘unite’ the ideas into a cloth. If any of the choices are incompatable you grab another card. Of course some things can be very challenging when presented as a design option like; ‘Use shades and varieties of white only’. Yikes- very difficult to me – I need the colour – but just maybe that’s the sort of challenge I need to bring on the WEAVE JUICES.
Jun
04
2010
You may have noticed how most of my posts are up on the same day! This is because of extreme lack of time and lack of confidence. I’ve found this in others post’s too, which is a comfort.
Anyway, how do you design from an image when loom weaving has so many restraints and restrictions to imagery and placement. It’s these limitations that are part the creative aspect in this challenge. The designs going on in our heads are mixed with our technical knowlege of what is possible on our looms without setting out to create a full imagery in tapestry weave.
So I’d like to quote a couple of paragraphs from the great American writer – Annie Dillard in her book ‘The Writing Life’. Writing about writing she offers this as a comfort to others discouraged by their writing or thinking they just haven’t got it. Her brilliant style of writing strikes at my very core. Let me know what you think…
It takes years to write a book – between two and ten years. Less is so rare as to be statistically insignificant. One American writer has writen a dozen major books over six decades. He wrote one of those books, a perfect novel, in three months. He speaks of it, still, with awe, almost whispering. Who wants to offend the spirit that hands out such books?
Faulkner wrote As I Lay Dying in six weeks; he claimed he knocked it off in his spare time from a twelve-hour-a-day job performing manual labour. There are other examples from other continents and centuries, just as albinos, assassins, saints, big people, and little people show up from time to time in large populations. Out of a human population on earth of four and a half billion, perhaps twenty people can write a serious book in a year. Some people lift cars, too. Some people enter week-long sled-dog races, go over Niagara Falls in barrels, fly planes through the Arc de Triomphe. Some people feel no pain in childbirth. Some people eat cars. There is no call to take human extremes as norms.
Hope this makes you feel braver, as it did me.
Jun
04
2010
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Stylised bamboo images are well known in textiles and wallpaper.
I found these and liked the incorporation of the bamboo ’seams’ and leaves together. My image for pics to picks didn’t have the leaves but they offer another dimension to the patterning.
I also experimented with a peg plan possibility. But my experiments didn’t go too smoothly but I will try again. I need to get the scale and proportions correct for the small pixel size of the peg plan.
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 The pegplan experiment |
Jun
04
2010
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Although I’ve decided to go with the bamboo image for my Pic to Picks weave challenge I’m still fiddling with all the other images that Meg gave me. The more I look, the more I see.Notice the blue image in the corner of this image. It was very interesting because it was on a curve and I was able to draw several various versions of this.
 I’m not sure how these will be used in my work but they are filling up my journal pages nicely.
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