Tien Chiu

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tiger eye

tiger_eye_closeup

This piece was one of my very early pieces – I wove it on my first loom, an 8-shaft Baby Wolf.  It was my first attempt at designing my own patterns, and I’m still very proud of it.  I took the “Heart Throb Scarf” pattern from Twill Thrills: The Best of Weaver’s and modified it ruthlessly until I had a pattern I liked.  I cut off the top part of the heart, reflected the bottom half of the heart to produced a “slit pupil” effect, then tinkered with the pattern beneath the heart until I had a rounded cat’s eye.  I then hand-dyed the silk warp in two subtly different shades of orange (to add visual interest), and the cashmere weft in solid black.

The beads are by Gayle Herring, lampworked glass.

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black fire

shawl

This shawl is closely related to “Liquid Fire“, except with a black weft instead of a changing-color weft.  It was inspired by an article by Flavian  Geis in Weaver’s magazine, which depicted a cocoon jacket.  My attempt at weaving the jacket was unsuccessful, but I had enough warp left over to weave a couple of shawls.  The first one I did in a black weft, and this is “Black Fire”.  It looks a little like tiger stripes, no?

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liquid fire

liquid-fire
Photo courtesy of Joe Decker, Rockslide Photography

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.

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silver fox

silver_shawl

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.

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advancing twill flowers

project_4

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.