autumn splendor

May 2, 2011 by Tien Chiu

I (heart) devore

Rather literally:

devore hearts, for the Fine Threads Study Group

These are my samples for the Fine Threads Study Group. After I finished weaving the fabric, I silkscreened devore paste onto it in the shape of a heart, using a freezer-paper stencil to create the silkscreen. (Which took two tries, since I had never done that before.) Then I ironed it until the tencel turned dark and crumbly, washed it out, and presto! a beautiful plain weave grid of metallic nylon, in the shape of a heart.

I am very pleased with the results, especially since it took several days of acute frustration to get it right. And, I’ve decided that devore is suitable for use without the machine-stitched outlines (which I thought looked tacky), though I will have to explore this a little more to make sure that larger sections of devore do not sag when hung.

Also, thinking it over, I think the metallic gold thread might be a better choice than the metallic nylon. The reason is this:

Devore hearts, metallic nylon against a red velvet background

devore square, metallic gold thread against red velvet

The metallic nylon is a little too assertive/too thick; it’s hard to see the fabric underneath (especially in person – the camera doesn’t catch all the glitter). The gold becomes a spidery web, revealing the underneath fabric clearly. Since I want people to be looking at the underneath fabric in the devore areas, the gold is a more appropriate choice.

Since I’ve flipflopped on this before, though, I’m going to give it another day or two (and some more extensive experiments) to be sure. I wish I had more fabric that I could cross-dye for backgrounds; I might have to dye some commercial fabric to give me the right colors to put underneath.

Next up is to weave some more samples, both to test out colors (I have 8 shades left to test) and to see what happens when I burn out larger areas. I will probably weave some sections in gold embroidery thread and some in metallic nylon, so I can compare effects when I do larger sections of burnout.

Once I decide on colors and metallic thread, next up is also some more dye experiments, getting the transition colors from green to brown, so I can make the overall fabric shade correctly. I will have to think carefully about my color choices, and what visual effect I’m after – if I include a section of gold, for example, it will draw the eye instantly, if the other colors are green and brown. So I need to think about what direction(s) to take the color transitions in the background fabric, as well as what metallic threads to use for devore.

May 2, 2011 by Tien Chiu

More simulations

I’ve started thinking about color gradients in the top layer of fabric, and produced these two samples:

fabric simulation, green to brown color gradient

I’m still debating which I like better. The green and brown emphasizes the leaves more, but is perhaps a little boring; the multicolored arrangement is much more lively, but starts to compete with the leaves (and possibly with the wearer?). To pull it off, I would have to use relatively low-chroma (“dull”) colors, to make the leaves look brighter by contrast.

The multicolor arrangement would also be a real pain in the butt to dye for. Each of those color transitions would probably require 20 or more shades to get the color transition smooth and unnoticeable; so now we’re talking 80 colors just to get a smooth color transition. Which also means winding 80 pirns and changing colors roughly every 3/4″ throughout a 60″ panel. And doing that four times: twice for the front, and twice for the back of the garment. It’s enough to make me contemplate an alternative, using a knitted blank to handle the color changes. That comes with its own problems, but it’s a lot quicker than sampling and then dyeing 80 shades!

The other problem is that Photoshop simulations really don’t adequately simulate the look of the finished piece. My early simulations suggested that a very pale brown would look best, but that just looked washed out. There is, practically speaking, no way to know without weaving samples…laborious beyond belief, but I don’t see any way around it. I’m rather dreading the prospect, though.

So I’ll toss out the question to you, gentle reader: which do you prefer? The green to brown transition, or the more multicolored one? Or something else entirely?

I’d love to hear your thoughts!

May 4, 2011 by Tien Chiu

Knitting machine

So I dusted off the old knitting machine that I’d bought off Craigslist a year or two ago, and gave it a go. After four hours of pulling my hair out, I am pleased to present the following:

Getting started was extremely frustrating – the manual was written in very bad English and almost useless for machine operation (though it did contain some detailed photos that proved handy in assembling the machine). Since I’d never tried machine knitting before, and wasn’t sure the equipment would work, it was a bit of an adventure as I twisted dials, adjusted tension, and discovered a million ways of operating the equipment incorrectly.

Anyway, it appears that, with a few more hours of practice, I should be competent to create knitted blanks for sampling. For the actual weaving I will probably have a friend with an auto-knitter do it, to save wear and tear on my shoulder. Knitting a blank long enough for 16 yards of warp makes me tired just thinking of it!

To improve the learning curve, though, I’m going up on Saturday to visit my friend Nancy Roberts. Aside from having the handy auto-knitter and a business creating knitted blanks, she is also a machine knitting teacher and can help me inspect and troubleshoot my machine as well as helping me with basic technique. If I can get both of those set, and the row counter repaired, I think I’ll be in business.

Weaving-wise, I think what I will do is created knitted blanks for both green and brown and the multicolor samples. This is a design experiment of sorts – seeing how the color and value progression affects the way the eye moves through the piece. I want a balance between background and leaves that draws the eye to the leaves as they fall to the ground, while providing a sense of motion in the rest of the piece as well.

Come to think of it, a faster way to do the design experiments might be to dye commercial cotton fabric and do the cutouts with an Exacto knife. It won’t show how it will look when woven but should work well enough for color and value samples in real fabric – much better than Photoshop simulations! So I will try that over the next few days, before dyeing and weaving up the knitted-blank samples. Sounds like fun!

May 5, 2011 by Tien Chiu

Color and value in design

I spent some time this morning messing around in Photoshop, confirming a lot of things I’d read about color theory. I played with hue (colors), value (lightness/darkness), and chroma (saturation), and produced about twenty new samples. I won’t post them all, but here are some of the most instructive ones:

First, value matters a lot, probably more than hue, in where the eye goes. Here are three samples, all with lighter values and darker values, at top, middle, and bottom:

autumn leaf simulation, light value on top

Notice how, despite the green being a higher chroma (“brighter”) color than brown, the eye is immediately attracted to the top section, which has a higher value (lighter).

Now, lighter value on bottom:

Here the eye is drawn immediately to the bottom. Not good, not bad – it depends entirely on what you’re after. This could work to draw the eye downward, if the effect is fairly subtle (more subtle than in this example) – in this example, the eye is drawn downwards and gets “stuck” there.

And, lighter value center:

Here the eye is drawn to the center of the piece.

And, just for yuks, here is lighter value top and bottom:

leaf simulation, lighter values on top and bottom

Here the eye bounces between top and bottom. This one I don’t like at all; the eye doesn’t know where to go.

And, finally, equal values throughout:

leaf simulation, more or less equal value throughout

Here there is virtually no movement in the background, and the eye is drawn immediately to the leaves.

Lesson from all this: value matters a lot in establishing where the eye goes.

My conclusion from all this is that I want to keep the value fairly constant, to keep the eye on the leaves, and maybe make it a very small bit lighter at the bottom, to draw attention downward.

Now, let’s look at saturation:

And here is the same simulation with the colors desaturated:

The “feel” of the first one is more exciting, but the leaves stand out better in the second one. This is because a bright color next to a dull color looks brighter, and a bright color draws the eye.

I think the right answer here is to pick a chroma somewhere between these two simulations – saturated enough to be interesting, but not enough to compete with the leaves. How saturated? Only experimentation will tell.

And, finally, color. Here is a version with red inserted, desaturated and lower-contrast so it doesn’t interfere with the leaves:

leaf simulation, all identical values, adding red to the background

Here the eye is drawn to the red center, which is the warmest color, partly because of the background and partly because of the red leaf, which is both the warmest colors and the highest-chroma (most saturated) of the leaves.

I am still mulling over all this. The question is, where do I want the eye focused? In this particular piece, I think I want the eye to enter on the top leaf, and be drawn downwards via the implied line between the leaves. The eye naturally enters at the top left of a piece (for Western viewers), because we read starting from the top left, so the top leaf is one of the natural entry points (especially since it’s bigger, and thus has more “weight”). The red leaf draws the eye downwards, and because it’s pointing in a specific direction, the eye starts heading southeast, doesn’t find anything there, and then follows the implied curve of the leaf shapes down to the brown leaf, giving a curvy line to the direction of the eye, and a sense of motion. This is more or less what I want. Having more stuff going on in the background would be a distraction.

Conclusion: use similar value colors in the background, probably green and brown, possibly with a slightly lighter value at the bottom. Keep the leaves at a relatively similar level of visual interest, but with slightly higher interest towards the center and bottom, to keep the eye moving downwards.

This is all utterly fascinating to me, as it uses all the design principles I learned in class. The design class I took has made me much more aware of where the eye is going and why – many thanks to Sharon Alderman, who suggested I take it! It has been really helpful in refining my design.

Nancy asked what type of knitting machine I have. It’s called an ArtKnitter 510, and Googling says nothing about it. I’m guessing it was an unsuccessful knockoff of the Brother and Toyota knitting machines, which disappeared without a trace. Nonetheless, mine seems reasonably functional, and I’ve been enjoying playing with it over the last few days!

May 5, 2011 by Tien Chiu

Iterative design

Peg, who has a talent for interesting questions, commented on my last blog post:

Tien, is this to be a wall piece? My problem with the usual design books, is that designing a piece of fluid fabric that is to be worn has more complex design problems that, so far as I can see, the usual art design books do not address.

The final product will not be a wall hanging, though I may produce one en route to the finished garment. And you are quite right – there are many more design considerations when creating a garment than are addressed in two-dimensional design books. (For one thing, the eye is naturally attracted to faces, so the eye always starts at the head of the wearer.)

That said, I am currently designing and sampling as if it were a two-dimensional piece, because it allows me to identify and solve design issues that, while not identical, will be relevant to the design issues in the finished garment. The motion of the eye down the flat form will not be identical to the motion in a garment on the wearer, but I think it will be similar enough that the flat samples will prove worthwhile.

The purpose of a sample, to me, is to answer a design question. The sample does not have to be the best answer to that question; in fact, it rarely is. What a well-designed sample does is provide an adequate answer to the specific design question, with minimum effort and resources. It models the important aspects of the design problem and ignores the rest. In doing so, of course, it makes assumptions about what is and is not relevant, and those assumptions may turn out wrong. But then one does further sampling and design to correct those errors, producing a set of successive approximations that eventually converge on good design. By making simplifying assumptions, it’s possible to break down the overall problem of design into many smaller and more addressable issues, which can be analyzed and sampled more quickly than if one tried to address all of them at once.

This method has solid roots in the scientific method. The purpose of a scientific experiment is very rarely to derive an entire theory; in fact, the objective of a scientific experiment is typically to acquire data that proves or disproves a very small hypothesis, a portion of an overall theory of how stuff works. The experiment may contribute to the development of the theory – Newton’s apple certainly contributed to his understanding of the law of gravity – but a single experiment or observation is typically designed to answer a very small, simplified version of more complex questions. If you wanted to understand a leaf falling, for example, you’d have to understand gravity, air resistance, wind currents, turbulence factors, and quite a few other things in addition to gravity. Trying to solve all those problems at once would lead to throwing up one’s hands in despair. It is easier to understand the problem by taking out the extraneous variables – so instead of studying gravity via a leaf in air, measure a cannonball falling in a vacuum. This requires making simplifying assumptions, but the simplification is valuable and can (eventually) be taken back to the problem of the leaf falling, as a portion of the solution.

That’s how I see sampling. The design problem I am trying to solve is extremely complex: how to design fabric to be layered on top of other fabric and then cut and sewn into a garment, so that the overall style of the garment (which also involves engineering design) combines with the design of the fabric to produce a specific artistic impact. It’s enough to make you throw up your hands in despair.

I’m approaching this through iterative design: answering small design questions en route to the larger ones, starting with the questions that are most important and/or which need to be answered first. The samples I’m building now are important for answering two questions:

What kind of fabric do I want to weave? (drape, appearance, etc.)
What design do I want to use for the front of the piece?

In this case, a really good answer to the question of designing the front would require sewing a mockup, i.e. a muslin, and designing based on a photo or surface design on the muslin. And in an ideal world, I’d have waited for the muslin to start designing the fronts. However, to have a muslin, you have to draft a pattern, and you can’t really design a garment without knowing the fabric – the weight, the drape, the fluidity of the material you’ll be working with. This means designing the fabric and weaving samples…and while you’re sampling for the type of fabric, you might as well put on some more warp and test out some design, colors, etc. Here I’m chaining two types of sampling together for convenience, because setting up a sample warp is very expensive, time-wise. It won’t be a perfect answer, but I think it will be an adequate one, and it will provide information I can feed back into the garment design.

That’s basically my approach to sampling: ask myself what design question I’m trying to answer, and then find the quickest approach to get that answered – not down to the smallest details, but in the rough – knowing I can refine my questions later. It’s an iterative process, and, while slow, is faster than trying to solve the whole problem at once.

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