Convergence and devore experiments

Just got notice that Autumn Splendor was not accepted into the Convergence Fashion Show.  I’m mildly disappointed, but also relieved, since this neatly solves two of my problems: (1) I had no entry ready for Glamour, Glitter, Glitz, the Complex Weavers juried show coming up this summer, and (2) I am no longer “obliged” to go to Convergence, meaning I can skip it and use the money to spend six days studying katazome with John Marshall instead.  This strikes me as a much more useful tradeoff, since I was registered for one class on Wednesday and another on Saturday morning, with two days wasted in between.  I’ll be a little sad to miss John Marshall’s class on weaving with exotic Japanese threads, but if I’m taking a six-day katazome class with him I imagine I can pick his brains on that while I’m there.

Of course, the entry deadline for Glamour, Glitter, Glitz is this Friday (the 23rd), meaning I had better get my house in order fast.  I’ll finish my application tonight.  No idea if it will be accepted since Complex Weavers is all about structure and there is nothing deeply complex about the weave structures involved, but if it isn’t, the Blue Ridge Fiber Show is always a possibility, in September.

Meanwhile, I have been busy constructing experiments in devore.  Here are some pix so far:

The liftplan for this looks like this:

The fuchsia represents the chenille wefts, the black the silk.  The idea was that the chenille would fluff up and cover the silk, except in areas where the chenille got burned out during the devore process (yet to be done).  Obviously it doesn’t completely cover the silk, but it hasn’t been wet-finished yet, and I expect it will fluff up substantially in wet-finishing.  There is one pick of 3000 ypp chenille for every two picks of 60/2 silk.

This evening I will weave more samples, cut off, and wet-finish; tomorrow morning I plan to do the devore.  It will be interesting to see what happens!