Tien Chiu

  • Home
  • About
    • Honors, Awards, and Publications
  • Online Teaching
  • Gallery
  • Essays
  • Book
  • Blog
  • Dye samples

Kodachrome Jacket

Kodachrome, on the cover of Handwoven
Kodachrome was my response to the Handwoven Garment Challenge in 2011.  Ten garments, five loom-shaped and five tailored, would be selected to appear in the Vav Fashion show in Sweden, and would be published in Handwoven. I decided it would be fun to enter, and Kodachrome was born.

Kodachrome, photographed by Joe Decker

I considered my design carefully.  At Convergence 2010, I had noticed that the best runway garments were the dramatic ones, with lots of color ““ delicate, beautiful, subtle patterns simply vanished from forty feet away.  I wanted Kodachrome to play well on the runway, but I also wanted it to reward the close-up viewer.  So I knew I wanted a colorful project, with bold colors, but also with an interesting woven pattern to reward the up-close viewer.

There were other design considerations.  Because (if it won) it would be published in Handwoven, I had to make it suitable for a Handwoven article.  This meant weaving something on eight shafts or less (as opposed to my customary 24), using commercially available yarn, a commercial pattern, and using techniques simple enough to explain in three magazine pages or less.  It also had to be designed, woven, and sewn in just two and a half months, since the contest began in mid-January and finished up on April 1.

Given the timeframe, I didn’t have a lot of time to experiment or design.  I decided to use a painted warp, as this could be done quickly with yarns I had in my stash, and to use 30/2 silk, because I had gobs of it on hand.  But I didn’t want to do a warp painted in a single bout ““ the scarves I’d seen that were wound in just one bout looked boring and predictable, and I wanted this piece to be jazzy and exciting.  So I decided to use stripes, each warp-painted in the same colors, but offset from each other so the colors wouldn’t “pool”.

Now I needed a pattern to go with the stripes of color.  I didn’t have much experience with 8-shaft designs, so I flipped through Carol Strickler’s A Weaver’s Book of Eight-Shaft Patterns until I found design #173, an advancing point twill.  I liked the overall look, but it didn’t quite suit my needs, so I made significant alterations to it, changing the look and the size of the pattern to suit the width of my stripes.

Since painted warps were unfamiliar ground, I decided to sample.  I painted six bouts for a 12″³ wide sample, testing different color spacings as well as different amounts of dye.  Here are the samples:

Two samples woven for Kodachrome
Two samples woven for Kodachrome

The left-hand sample had less dye, the right-hand sample had more dye.  In the left sample, I experimented with having the colors semirandomly arranged in the piece; in the right sample, I tried to line the colors up more precisely.

I finally decided that I liked the more intense colors and the semirandom arrangement of colors in the stripes, and wove up 13 yards of this delightful fabric:

Fabric for Kodachrome
Fabric for Kodachrome

Meanwhile, I had been working with Sharon Bell (the seamstress who helped me with my wedding dress) to develop the pattern for the coat.  We selected a simple pattern, Butterick 5259:

Butterick 5259, the pattern I used for Kodachrome

Then we sewed several muslins, perfecting the fit.  On the final few muslins, I drew lines on both the fabric and the pattern, practicing matching the stripes, until I was pleased with the results.  We added heavy black piping to the edges to help define them, and lined the jacket in black silk charmeuse.
As I was nearing completion on the jacket, Sharon said, “Do you have any fabric left?  We could make a hat to go with the jacket.”  I had a little over a yard of fabric left ““ plenty to make a hat! ““ so I went hunting for hat patterns.  I found a Vogue beret pattern, which could be (severely) adapted to work, and made a little rainbow beret:
A hat! A most magnificent hat!
A hat! A most magnificent hat!
And here are the “official” photos of Kodachrome, taken by Joe Decker of Rock Slide Photography:
Kodachrome jacket and hat, full view
Kodachrome jacket and hat, full view
Kodachrome closeup, jacket and hat
Kodachrome closeup, jacket and hat
Detail of Kodachrome
Detail of Kodachrome

The complete story of Kodachrome can be found at https://tienchiu.com/tag/kodachrome-jacket/ .

© Copyright 2016 Tien Chiu · All Rights Reserved ·

 

Loading Comments...