Tien Chiu

  • Home
  • About Tien
    • Honors, Awards, and Publications
  • Online Teaching
  • Gallery
  • Essays
  • Book
  • Blog
  • Dye samples
You are here: Home / All blog posts / Samples as experiments
Previous post: The courage to love
Next post: The Waiting Place

April 4, 2012 by Tien Chiu

Samples as experiments

Today’s tidbit is about sampling.  We are often told to “sample, sample, sample” but not given a solid reason why or how to sample.  Or rather, we are given only part of the answer: one weaves samples to see what the finished cloth will look like.

I’d like to offer a more expansive definition of sampling:

A sample is an experiment  to answer a question about design or execution of a project.

This is very different from “put an extra half-yard to yard of warp on the loom to experiment with”.  In my world, woven samples are only half the story, and the most expensive half!

My feeling is that an efficient sample is one that answers the design or execution question with minimum effort.  For design questions, an initial sample might be a sketch of the project.  This provides a quick way to look at overall composition before launching into more detailed work.  Once you are satisfied with the quick sketch, more detailed simulations might be effective; the exact nature of the simulation depends on the question that you are trying to answer.

In essence, a sample is an experiment – it answers the question, Does this work?  “This” might be an aspect of design or composition, or it might be a question about construction.  The most important part of sampling, in my opinion, is to know the question you are trying to answer and design the sample to answer that question as efficiently as possible.  Wondering about color in a garment?  Whip out Photoshop, or your colored pencils, and do a mockup.  If you still aren’t sure, dye some cheap fabric in your proposed color combinations and sew it into a muslin.  But consider the cost of your samples when deciding how to sample: the dyed-muslin sample is much more expensive – both in time and in materials – than a ten-minute Photoshop exercise, so if Photoshop will do, skip the muslin.  The idea is to execute your experiments with a minimum of investment, to answer your questions most efficiently.

Share this post!

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

Filed Under: All blog posts, musings, writing Tagged With: book

Previous post: The courage to love
Next post: The Waiting Place

Comments

  1. Lisa Dusseault says

    April 4, 2012 at 1:20 pm

    I couldn’t agree more! Do you remember helping me sample my knitting using embroidery?
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/milele/4849648381/

    The question was “how do these colours look in this layout” and an embroidered sample was easier to change than a knitted sample. I pulled out several of the stitches while working on this sample, and re-embroidered with new colours until I was happy.

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 ·