finished – Page 4

August 18, 2009 by Tien Chiu 4 Comments

liquid fire

This shawl rose out of an unsuccessful attempt to weave the advancing-twill cocoon jacket published by Flavian Geis in Weaver’s magazine (can’t remember the issue). It was a beautiful jacket, with a warp that gradually changed colors from red to yellow and back again, and a weft that alternated between black and a sequence that changed from red to yellow and back again. The result was an absolutely beautiful jacket. I wove it up only to discover that, alas, my loom was too narrow! and the resulting jacket was too short for anyone older than 8. What a disappointment!

Nonetheless, I forged on. I had enough warp on the loom for three more shawls, so I wove two shawls with black weft with the intent of giving them away. Then I found myself looking at the pirns full of those beautiful red-to-yellow shades. I had hand-dyed 20 skeins of yarn in colors changing gradually from red to yellow, so close in hue that it was nearly impossible to distinguish adjacent stripes. I had enough left over on the pirns to weave one last shawl. Would it work? There was only one way to find out!

…so I wove up the shawl, in 1.5″ stripes of each weft color, to produce an absolutely stunning shawl. I have since done more complex work with changing colors, but this was my first piece, and I love it.

Liquid Fire on the loom (a Leclerc Diana). The paper tape on the right is a measuring-mechanism, that tells me how much I've woven, and when to change weft colors.

A closeup of "Liquid Fire". Here the weft is red, showing the advancing twill pattern clearly.

Half the Liquid Fire shawl. This photo shows how the weft color changes gradually from red at left to yellow at the center of the piece, producing a starburst-like pattern.

The completed Liquid Fire shawl. Photo courtesy Joe Decker, Rockslide Photography.

August 15, 2009 by Tien Chiu

goldenrod shawl

This came off the same warp as the silk/cashmere jacket and the garnet shawl, and shares the same draft as the garnet shawl. (I liked the pattern so much I wove a second one!)

Weaving this was a real challenge – for some reason, one of the shafts in my loom was floating, so there are many irregularities in the cloth. For this reason, I didn’t show it at CNCH (my regional weaving conference), but I still think it’s pretty.

Computer simulation of the pattern, generated by weaving software.

The dyed cashmere/silk weft yarn, shown against the silk warp yarns.

The shawl on the loom.

A photo of the shawl before wet-finishing.

August 15, 2009 by Tien Chiu Leave a Comment

six shaft huck lace shawl

This was one of my very early pieces, woven on an eight-shaft Baby Wolf during the four months or so that I owned it (I upgraded shortly thereafter to a 16-shaft Leclerc Diana). It’s a six-shaft huck lace pattern, drawn from the book Handwoven Laces, woven in a 2/28 nm white silk.

I wove two of these shawls, one for B.’s mom and one for his sister.

A computer simulation of the shawl pattern.

A closeup photo of the finished shawl.

The finished shawl. Sadly, it's difficult to make out the pattern, as the white all washes into a single blob.

August 14, 2009 by Tien Chiu Leave a Comment

silver fox

This shawl was woven using four strands of a lovely gray cashmere/silk blend, loosely twisted together, as warp. Weft was the same yarn, dyed black. The pattern is an advancing twill, either taken directly from, or greatly influenced by, an article in Weaver’s magazine (I think it’s also in Twill Thrills: The Best of Weaver’s).

This shawl was woven as a gift for a dear friend of mine, who has become a Tibetan lama (very rare for a Caucasian woman) and now lives in India, with only occasional teaching tours to the U.S. Sadly, I have no more photos of it – it was one of my favorite pieces when I wove it. I still think it’s beautiful, and I hope she’s enjoying it.

August 1, 2009 by Tien Chiu Leave a Comment

advancing twill flowers

This was a very early piece – my fourth weaving project, in fact! – and is the “Advancing Twill Flowers” shawl published in an issue of Handwoven Magazine. The only changes I made were to weave it up in 2/28 nm silk and 2/28 nm black cashmere, instead of sewing thread (which increased the width from scarf to shawl), and to shift the colors very slightly.

All the colors in this shawl are hand-dyed (by me). I had a small apartment at the time, and didn’t have the space to store lots of colors, so I bought a lot of white yarn and dyed it to my needs. I still dye all my own yarns, preferring the greater range of colors I can get by dyeing my own.