sewing | Tien Chiu's Blog

May 10, 2015 by Tien Chiu

A ton of inspiration

Last week was a pretty quiet week, creatively speaking – right up until yesterday, when I innocently went up to San Francisco to see an exhibit, and got dumped into a huge vat of inspiration.

The exhibit was one I’d wanted to see for quite some time – “High Style,” a collection of couture dresses spanning 100 years, from the Brooklyn Museum’s famous costume collection. The accompanying book had been on my Amazon wish list for quite some time – full of luscious dresses. So when I discovered that the exhibit had traveled to San Francisco’s Legion of Honor Museum, I decided to go.

The exhibit is fabulous. If you have a chance to see it, definitely do. It covers a broad range of couture designers over a century of fashion. Fortunately, non-flash photography was allowed in the exhibit, so here are a few of my favorite dresses.

I unfortunately did not remember to photograph the plaque for this dress, so I don’t recall the designer. However, I was very taken with the simple lines and the lovely netted pearls and rhinestones:

And I simply love, love, love the sleeves on this dress by Sorelle and Micol Fontana. At first blush, they look like a cape! I love the drama of the contrasting sleeve and lining, and want to use the idea in a piece. Somehow.

And here, to fuel my phoenix obsession, is a shoe with elegant gold-and-black flames:

Shoe prototype by Steven Arpad — “Shoe prototype” by Steven Arpad

And finally, who could resist? I bought a postcard of this dress to take home and show to Tigress. (She was unimpressed, of course, having her own, far more beautiful, coat.)

"The Tigress" evening ensemble, by Gilbert Adrian — “The Tigress” evening ensemble, by Gilbert Adrian

But the exhibit wasn’t all. My friend and fellow weaver Alfred (who went to the exhibit with me) and I decided to have lunch in Japantown afterwards. Alas, the restaurant we wanted to go to wasn’t open yet, so we sat down on a bench to show each other our recent work. When we looked up, this intriguing shop was directly across from us:

"Paper Tree" - an origami store — “Paper Tree” – the origami store

If we’d just been walking by, I wouldn’t have noticed it – there are any number of art-paper-and-stationery stores floating around, at least in the Bay Area. But the subtitle, “the origami store,” piqued my interest. About two decades ago I was obsessed with origami, and folded quite a few complex models before giving it up for other pursuits. But I have never entirely lost interest in the art of folding paper. Origami has evolved far beyond the simple paper crane, and a quick look through this shop showed some of the amazing possibilities.

And it may have addressed one of the questions I’ve been wrestling with: what format I want to use for my woven art. I don’t want to do clothing forever, but I enjoy a three-dimensional format; two-dimensional work leaves me, well, flat. But what three-dimensional things could I do with cloth, that aren’t clothing?

Quite a bit, as it turns out. Here are a few of the fabulous possibilities:

"Origami Tessellations", by Eric Gjerde — “Origami Tessellations”, by Eric Gjerde

Some of the more complex tessellations may be more suited to plain cloth, but I found a ton of inspiration here.

And here’s another amazing book:

"Origami Sculpture" by Saadya Sternberg — “Origami Sculpture” by Saadya Sternberg

three dimensional curves from "Sculptural Origami" — three dimensional curves from “Sculptural Origami”

Finally, a slightly more useful format:

"Fabulous Origami Boxes" by Tomoko Fuse — “Fabulous Origami Boxes” by Tomoko Fuse

I’m super excited about all these possibilities, and can’t wait to try them out!

Finally, here is Fritz, doing some paper-folding of his own.

Fritz's approach to origami — Fritz’s approach to origami

May 18, 2014 by Tien Chiu

Eureka!

After three years of fiddling, I have a design for Phoenix Rising that I am happy with. Behold!

second version of Phoenix Rising muslin, with sleeve

I’m very pleased with this muslin, though many details still need to be worked out. The dangling flames flutter beautifully in the breeze, the color gradation gives the sense of flame igniting, and the dark blue really “pops” the fiery colors. After years of fiddling with this and that, I have a design that really speaks to me, that I think is worthwhile. Hallelujah!

I am still on the fence about the sleeve (which would actually be shredded at the bottom, to continue the flame motif). Here is the sleeveless version:

muslin for Phoenix Rising, without sleeve

I like the idea of the sleeve because it gives a natural ending point to the piece, and balances the longer part of the skirt. The sleeveless version feels unbalanced to me, and also my eye gets “stuck” at the shoulder. The sleeve lets it flow down. It may not be the length in the photo – there are many twiddles yet to go – but I like the idea.

A second happiness, as you may have noticed, is that I have finally gotten the photo studio set up to the point where I can take pretty darned good photos. You would laugh if you saw how ridiculously compressed the photo studio is, but it works! Lieven helped me fine-tune it this afternoon, and showed me some Photoshop tricks. I wouldn’t call the resulting images professional grade yet, but the raw material is good enough to be publishable after some better Photoshop tweaking. After I find a publisher, I’ll worry about tweaking it properly.

What’s next after this muslin? Well, now I’m going to weave fabric samples. I have some ideas for making more interesting color-gradient cloth – echo weave is a distinct possibility, but there are others. I also want to try weaving with finer silk thread (120/2 or 140/2 silk as opposed to my usual 60/2) to see if I can produce the floaty fabric that I’m envisioning. And I want to weave samples of a crinkled blue-black cloth for use in the undergarment. (Sharon and I are envisioning the blue undergarment as a close-fitting pair of pants, to give the flames the most flutter.)

We will probably not do more muslins for a good couple of months, though. I’m working on losing weight – lost ten pounds so far and want to lose another thirty or forty pounds – which would play havoc with a closely-fitted garment. So the next few months will be about weaving fabric samples and yardage. I’m looking forward to finally doing something with all that fine-threads yarn I’ve been accumulating!

Other plans for the coming week include putting the fly shuttle attachments and the auto-advance mechanism onto Emmy. I’m missing one or two minor parts for the fly shuttle (which I purchased used), so will be ordering them from AVL tomorrow morning. The auto-advance should be a piece of cake, but since I’m halfway through adding the fly shuttle, I don’t want to mess with the loom until I have that completed. After that I’ll probably use the color study warp to test out/fine-tune the fly shuttle and auto advance. And then, I’ll work out a new draft for Phoenix Rising, and put a sample warp onto the loom. (The sea turtles are on hold for now.) I’m also going to create my examples for the book’s chapter on visual design. That’s overdue, because I’ve been too busy setting up my photography studio! But time to get back to it now. My plans may be delayed, but they are not totally shredded. Phoenix Rising is fun, but the book is important too.

Speaking of shredding, I rather unwisely left a roll of paper towels on the dining room table a few days ago. Several hours later, Mike came into the dining room and was greeted with this carnage – complete with red-handed (red-pawed?) culprit:

I’m not 100% certain that Fritz was the perpetrator, though. Tigress is usually the one who shreds paper towels, so perhaps Fritz was merely the fall guy for her misdeeds?

May 16, 2014 by Tien Chiu

Setting up a photography studio

I’ve decided to use Phoenix Rising’s development process as examples for my book (yes, I’m still working on it), which means taking photos of the work in progress. Which means I need to take publishable-quality photos at home. So I’m setting up a mini photography studio in the garage, next to Emmy.

To call this a studio is a bit generous. The space is incredibly cramped, maybe four feet wide by ten feet long. On one side of the corridor is Emmy; on the other side is the garage door. At the end is a backdrop stand with a white “muslin” backdrop (I think it’s actually a polyester fabric), and crammed in at either side are two light stands. The setup looks like this:

I’ve spent the last few days learning far more than I ever wanted to know about cameras – aperture sizes, exposure times, lenses, and camera controls. I’ve also been playing with lighting, gray cards (used to adjust the color balance), etc. I still need more lighting – a second lighting kit is due to arrive today – and need to figure out how to find space for it (the hard part). But the photos are improving.

Here’s the original photo I took of the muslin, taken as a hand-held snapshot with flash a couple days ago:

No special lighting, harsh shadow around the right edge of the photo, no backdrop. Also slightly blurry.

Here’s the second photo, after several days of fiddling, taken with my DSLR camera (on tripod). Also slightly blurry, but the light is a lot more even. I have one light on the background (to eliminate shadows) and one on the dress form. The lighting is still not ideal, though – the bottom left of the muslin is still in shadow.

second shot of muslin, with lighting and tripod

And here’s a photo taken with Mike’s mirrorless interchangeable lens camera, which has a much better lens than my DSLR camera. For this one we used manual focusing, which is much more practical on his camera than mine. (With mine, you have to look through a tiny viewfinder to see what will be photographed – and at that size and that distance, it’s impossible to tell whether something is in sharp focus. Mike’s camera has a large LED display which automatically zooms in to let you check the focus.)

This came out significantly better than the two previous photos:

photo taken with Mike's mirrorless, interchangeable-lens camera (with a much better lens) — photo taken with Mike’s mirrorless, interchangeable-lens camera (with a much better lens)

Obviously the lighting needs to be fixed, but the image itself is much sharper and brighter than before. (The backdrop was in the washer (to remove wrinkles) during the shot.) I’m not sure whether to attribute that to the better lens or the manual focusing, but it’s definitely improved.

Next step? The second lighting kit will arrive today, so I can tweak the lighting. I also need to master the settings on Mike’s camera. And Lieven (my critique partner, who is a top-notich photographer) will be coming by in the next few days to help me fine-tune things.

Meanwhile, as soon as I get a decent photo of this muslin, I’m going to start making changes. Hopefully I can do that tomorrow, as I’m running up to see Sharon on Sunday and would like to make more progress before showing it to her.

Finally, here are our in-house athletes again, showing off their second Olympic event: synchronized yawning. (Photo credit for this one goes to Mike.)

Fritz and Tigress, yawning in unison — Fritz and Tigress, demonstrating an Olympic sport

May 11, 2014 by Tien Chiu

Phoenix Rising – first muslin

After finishing the chocolates yesterday, I went out to the dyepots to dye the cloth for the next Phoenix Rising muslin. I started with this:

and added some low-water immersion dyed fabrics:

I let them batch and rinsed them out yesterday night. This morning I got up before dawn, excited to try them out. And here’s the end result – my first muslin.

I like this a lot – it’s my favorite of all the mockups I’ve done. The dark blue makes the fiery colors really “pop”, and is spot-on thematically (the depressive blues vs. the fires of mania). The color gradation makes me think of something being set on fire, and the transition from the bodice to the dangling strips of fabric feels natural. I really, really like this.

Next step will be to cut the dangling strips into irregular “flames,” as the strips are too rectangular and regular right now. I will also try singeing the edges. I like the idea of singed edges, both thematically (being burned by fire) and because it would save me from the problem of finishing the edges. (Hand overcast hundreds of inches of edge? Egad!)

I am a little worried about the swing of the skirt – the idea is for the strips to flit about as the wearer moves. However, if I put it over another skirt, I’ll lose a lot of the motion. I think I will make the bottom pants, not a skirt, and make them out of a dark blue crinkled fabric. Haven’t decided yet whether to make them fitted or loose-fitting. That will come out in other muslins.

Another possibility for getting “swing” into the skirt is to add some light beading, especially at the bottom. I’d have to be careful for fear of distorting the flame shapes, but four or five beads would add a little bit of swing without being overly obtrusive. I would probably also add some beading to the top, perhaps beaded fringe. More things to test out in muslins!

I am very, very happy with how things are going!

Speaking of happy, here is a delighted Tigress, who has learned that – O joy! – if she brings her cat toys back to us, we’ll throw them again for her to chase. Yes – we now have a cat that plays fetch! Here she is, playing her new favorite game. (And yes, that’s one of my paper pirns she’s chasing. Who knew that weaving tools were so versatile?)

May 1, 2014 by Tien Chiu

Phoenix Rising reloaded

Yeah, I know I wasn’t going to work on Phoenix Rising until after the book chapters were fully revised. But the CNCH Fashion Show inspired me, and as I am making good progress on chapter revision, I thought I’d indulge in a bit of design.

As you undoubtedly know, I’ve had a lot of trouble getting Phoenix Rising into focus, design-wise. It’s been all sorts of samples, garment designs, wall hangings, scarves – I’ve had a really hard time settling on a single design. So I thought it might help to establish some constraints.

First, Phoenix Rising is going to be a garment. It may well be my last garment, so it’s going to be over the top. And definitely artwear, as opposed to everyday wear or even wearable art.

Second, it will mostly feature handwoven cloth. In future work I may use surface design techniques, but this will mostly be handwoven, though it may also include surface design or embellishments done on the handwoven fabric.

Third, it will be on theme. I thought it might be helpful to write the artist’s statement first, as a kind of mission statement for the piece. So here it is:

Phoenix Rising is a celebration of my “rebirth” from Type II bipolar disorder. The dark parts symbolize the pain of bipolar depression, the fiery phoenix symbolizes the glory of rebirth, of life. The fire also represents the ordeal: passing through fire, perhaps being burned badly, on the way to rebirth.

I found these strictures more useful than constraining – they helped give some focus to the piece.

Next I looked through my collection of haute couture photos, which I harvest every year from Style.com. I don’t save everything, just the garments that have interesting ideas. The garment doesn’t have to be beautiful, just innovative – I’m not copying it, just getting concepts. I dump the photos into Evernote and use them as a starting-point.

I found one particular garment by Jean-Paul Gaultier to be compelling:

dress from Jean-Paul Gaultier's Fall 2011 collection — dress from Jean-Paul Gaultier’s Fall 2011 collection

While I wasn’t wild about the padded inserts at breasts and hips, I really liked the shredded-looking appearance of the ribbon “skirt”. I wanted to use the idea, not with ribbons but with torn strips of fabric, in fiery colors.

This inspired my first design sketch:

The idea was to put the feathery skirt over a pair of blue/black pants. The pants would be woven in dark blue and black, crimp cloth to make it rough, with red at the bottom of the crimps. This would symbolize bipolar depression. It would also work visually – the blue-black color would make the fiery skirt “pop”, since blue is the complement of orange. (Complementary colors intensify each other when placed side by side.)

That was okay, but I really didn’t like the top. The oval inserts at the side, while slimming, didn’t have anything to do with the rest of the garment, and the sleeves were competing with the feathery skirt for attention. The feathers/flames at top were quite different in look and feel from the feathers/flames at bottom, and the whole design felt disjointed. So I set it aside for a day or two.
Then I went to visit my friend Lisa. She suggested repeating the blue/black color at the top, which would add interest to the top. Thematically, it could symbolize both the cyclical nature of bipolar disorder (highs alternating with lows) and the rebirth/death/rebirth cycle of the phoenix. And it would also “pop” the flames at the top (those complementary colors again!) and add some unity between top and bottom of the garment.This seemed like a sound idea, so I drew up design sketch #2:

In this design sketch, the feathers/flames at the bottom are repeated at the top, but in a stiffer material that will stand out slightly from the body, adding dimensionality. (I’m hoping that this will give the impression of an upper torso bursting out of flames.) I eliminated the sleeves, though the feathers/flames on the left side do drape down over one arm.

I’m still not happy with this sketch – there isn’t anything (yet) to connect top and bottom, and it feels unbalanced. But I don’t think I’ll get much further with sketches, so the next plan is to try out a couple of variations on the dress form. I’m having a friend over for a dye day on Sunday, and will dye some fabrics to use in testing.

Finally, here is a shot of Fritz and Tigress, practicing inverted yoga on the couch:

Aren’t they adorable?