Tien Chiu

  • Home
  • About
    • Honors, Awards, and Publications
  • Online Teaching
  • Gallery
  • Essays
  • Book
  • Blog
  • Dye samples
You are here: Home / All blog posts / Finished placemats; dyed the silks
Previous post: Indigo placemats
Next post: Skeins, skeins, skeins

November 15, 2007 by Tien Chiu

Finished placemats; dyed the silks

Another productive day, especially since I interrupted it to go to the gym and also to talk to a recruiter.  I finished weaving the indigo placemats (5 of them!) and will wet-finish them in the washer tonight.  It didn’t even take me that long to weave – I’m guesstimating that it only took me about 3 hours to weave 2.5 yards.  Of course, that’s at about 18 picks  (weft threads) per inch – I used a fairly coarse linen (16/2 linen, 10/2 cotton) to make a nice heavy placemat.  The tiger jacket, which will be fine silk at 45 picks per inch, will be much slower to weave.

And I have finished dyeing the colored silks for the jacket!  (I still need to dye 300g of black, but I won’t need it until much later.  I’ll probably do it tomorrow.)  They are spread out on the sofa for me to admire, all except the orange-red/red ones which are drying in the oven.  (Handy tip: if you ever want to dry yarn quickly, pop it in the oven – far from the heating element – and set the oven to about 140-150 degrees.  Then crack the door open.  In a couple of hours, your yarn will be nice and dry.)  Tomorrow, when they’re all dry, I’ll lay them out in a spectrum and take a photo.

I can say, however, that they are absolutely FABULOUS.  I got the nice gradual color shift I had been looking for – you can scarcely tell the difference between the adjacent skeins in the color transition, but it slowly progresses from yellow through orange to bright red.  I can’t wait for the skeins to dry so I can take a photo/admire my work.  It’s just pretty.

Tomorrow promises to be a busy day, too.  I now need to wind all those skeins of ultra-fine yarn into balls, and start winding the warp.  It’s going to be a real challenge taking the yarn off the balls without making a mess.  A friend sent me a cone winder last week and I hope it arrives tomorrow!  It would be VERY convenient to be able to wind the stuff onto much-more-manageable cones for use and storage.

I’ve decided I want to try getting this jacket done in time to take it to Maryland for Thanksgiving, where I’m going to see my family and go to my 20-year high school reunion (how time flies!).  That gives me from now until next Wednesday to get it finished.  It’ll be really tight, especially if I get a job (I find out tomorrow whether the one place is going to make me an offer).  But I’m going to give it a try.

Whew!  I hope my other days are just as productive.

Share this post!

  • Tweet
  • More
  • Email
  • Share on Tumblr
  • Print

Filed Under: All blog posts, textiles, dyeing, weaving

Previous post: Indigo placemats
Next post: Skeins, skeins, skeins

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 ·