devore | Tien Chiu's Blog

March 24, 2012 by Tien Chiu

Attempted devore with flame pattern

Here is the results of my burnout attempts (not very impressive yet, I’m afraid!):

Here I attempted to apply the devore paste from the back, and as you can see, it was less than successful – this was meant to be a circle, but even after much enthusiastic scrubbing the chenille did not come off completely. Either I did not heat it enough for the burnout to happen, or the devore paste did not penetrate the fabric enough to burn out the chenille. Maybe a bit of both.

However, this raggedy sample is still super-valuable as a “proof-of-concept”: the chenille does burn away to reveal the pattern beneath, and the devore paste does not affect the colors (something I was worried about earlier). The rest of it will be a matter of working out how to apply the devore paste, how much thickener to add, etc. And experimenting with shibori and other kinds of bound resist.

My plans for this weekend have mostly been turned upside down by the weather – I had been planning to do a lot of surface design experiments, but it’s forecast to rain all weekend. Rats. It rains so seldom here (especially in this dry winter) that I’m always surprised when it happens – it’s not a bad thing, because we badly need rain this year, but it’s certainly inconvenient for working outdoors.

Instead, my plans are:

weave more samples for devore, to be burned-out whenever it stops raining
make more quilt blocks for my class
finish off entry applications for CNCH and New Fibers 2012
screen print, cut, and apply my labels
get back to work on the book

Not a whole lot of excitement for the weekend, but maybe that’s a good thing. The house closes in mid-April, so between mid-April and mid-May (when we move in) there will be an awful lot of packing to do!

March 23, 2012 by Tien Chiu

Flames fabric

I sneaked home at lunchtime. Here is the flame fabric, pre-devore (sorry for the slightly blurry photos):

reverse side of silk fabric — reverse side of fabric (silk-dominant)

The pattern is clearly visible on the reverse side, but from the front side it looks like solid chenille. This is by design; later tonight I’ll burn out the chenille, applying the burnout chemical from the back (so I can see the pattern in the finished cloth, and also so the burnout chemical doesn’t have to penetrate all that fuzz). Fortunately I have a respirator with acid-gas cartridges on hand; those fumes are not good for your lungs!

March 21, 2012 by Tien Chiu

Convergence and devore experiments

Just got notice that Autumn Splendor was not accepted into the Convergence Fashion Show. I’m mildly disappointed, but also relieved, since this neatly solves two of my problems: (1) I had no entry ready for Glamour, Glitter, Glitz, the Complex Weavers juried show coming up this summer, and (2) I am no longer “obliged” to go to Convergence, meaning I can skip it and use the money to spend six days studying katazome with John Marshall instead. This strikes me as a much more useful tradeoff, since I was registered for one class on Wednesday and another on Saturday morning, with two days wasted in between. I’ll be a little sad to miss John Marshall’s class on weaving with exotic Japanese threads, but if I’m taking a six-day katazome class with him I imagine I can pick his brains on that while I’m there.

Of course, the entry deadline for Glamour, Glitter, Glitz is this Friday (the 23rd), meaning I had better get my house in order fast. I’ll finish my application tonight. No idea if it will be accepted since Complex Weavers is all about structure and there is nothing deeply complex about the weave structures involved, but if it isn’t, the Blue Ridge Fiber Show is always a possibility, in September.

Meanwhile, I have been busy constructing experiments in devore. Here are some pix so far:

The liftplan for this looks like this:

The fuchsia represents the chenille wefts, the black the silk. The idea was that the chenille would fluff up and cover the silk, except in areas where the chenille got burned out during the devore process (yet to be done). Obviously it doesn’t completely cover the silk, but it hasn’t been wet-finished yet, and I expect it will fluff up substantially in wet-finishing. There is one pick of 3000 ypp chenille for every two picks of 60/2 silk.

This evening I will weave more samples, cut off, and wet-finish; tomorrow morning I plan to do the devore. It will be interesting to see what happens!

May 29, 2011 by Tien Chiu

Next sample

Yesterday I spent catching up on sleep. I’ve been pretty stressed out the last week about a Major Life Decision coming up – unfortunately I don’t have enough data to make that decision yet, but it should resolve by the end of next week. I hope.

Anyway, I have not been completely idle: I knitted two more blanks (will dye them today), wove another sample, made some leaf stencils, mixed up some burnout paste, and made another burnout sample:

I feel that the mesh as it stands is not stable enough to work in a garment; if you snagged it just once, the whole thing would fall askew. So I have been testing out ways to stabilize it. Trying to stitch after burnout turned out a mess; even using two layers of wash-out stabilizer, one on top and one on bottom, the mesh still distorted. It didn’t help that I was using clear monofilament machine embroidery thread, which stretches, pulls out, and does all sorts of untoward things when sewn over delicate fabric. So I switched to the gold embroidery thread, and stitched two sections: one with a diagonal grid and one with a semirandom, vaguely diagonal grid. This is what you see above.

Here is the same sample post burnout:

Both sides are quite stable and much less subject to snagging; the diagonal mesh is more stable than the semirandom one. I think having straight lines and more intersections adds stability.

The downside is that this method of stabilizing requires a LOT of sewing, and I feel that the diagonal lines look very rigid. I think that, if I have to use diagonal lines, I will embroider over the grid with some thicker gold thread in swoopy gusts (think autumn winds) before burnout, in an effort to reduce the visual impact of the grid.

Off to the farmer’s market! Later today I will dye my knitted blanks, so I can get back to weaving tomorrow.

May 26, 2011 by Tien Chiu

First devore sample

I finished weaving the first sample with a painted warp and knitted blank yesterday. I love it!

The striations in color don’t bother me at all – they add interest and, because most of it is burned away, the visual impact will be significantly less post-devore.

Here are two closeups – in the first the pattern (wavy diagonal stripes) is clearly visible, in the second it is subtle to invisible:

first sample - painted warp, knitted blank

first sample, close-up, painted warp, knitted blank

I then laid out a pattern of leaves on the fabric, using freezer paper as a stencil and ironing it to the fabric:

first sample, leaf layout - painted warp, knitted blank

And I applied the devore solution and burned out the fabric:

first sample, post devore, painted warp knitted blank

(The reason it looks ratty along the bottom left and bottom right edges is because I deliberately left some of the selvedges on in that section, to see if that produced a more stable fabric.)

Here is a closeup:

I like this! There are a number of obvious flaws that need correction – the stems disappeared, definition around the edges is poor, there are doubled threads in the gold warp, and so on – but leaves are floating on the gold “lace”, and the grid of gold thread is surprisingly stable. So stable that I’m wondering whether I partially melted the polyester – I used an press on damp fabric, which compressed the fabric and heated it at the same time, which may have set permanent pleats in the polyester thread, holding the grid in place.

Things I probably did wrong, which may have contributed to the flaws:

Applied too much devore solution, with too much pressure with the brush, so it flowed under the edges of the stencil
The freezer paper did not adhere well enough. May iron it longer next time, so it adheres better to the fabric.
Pressed it while the burnout paste was still wet (okay, I was impatient, but we all know that 🙂 ), probably contributing to poor definition around the edges
Devore solution may have been too runny – though I don’t know; if it had been thicker it probably would not have penetrated to the back of the fabric. Will have to experiment with this some.
Floats in the draft may have been too long, contributing to poor edge definition. May have to experiment with this. More gold threads (1 out of every 3? 1 of every 2?) may help with this as well.

Things I’m thinking about now:

Whether to replace the pattern with a pattern that has shorter floats. The current pattern has quite a few 5-thread floats in warp and weft; this produces poorer definition around the edges of the burnout sections. If I reduce the floats to 2 or 3 threads, I’ll get better definition (at least in theory). The downside is that I’ll get poorer contrast between sections. Only a test will show whether it’s worthwhile.
What to use as background. I am thinking either a color gradation from green to brown (as originally planned) or shades of pale blue. The green/brown will harmonize with the colors, the blue will make the oranges, yellows, and reds really “pop” (because blue is the complement of orange), but will produce a cooler feeling in the piece overall. I want a warm “feel” to the piece – a cozy log fire rather than chilly gray days. I will dye pieces of commercial fabric to test out those color combinations.
Whether to thicken the devore paste more. I am almost out of Fiber Etch (a premixed solution), so will have to start mixing my own. This is something of a pain, but also means I can make it thicker if I like.

All in all, this was a successful sample – I’m very pleased.

Next steps are to wind the second knitted blank onto bobbins, adjust the warp (some sections need to be re-aligned), and weave up the second warp sequence. This section of warp has gradual color changes, rather than the sharp contrasts in the first section, so will look somewhat different, even without the knitted-blank changes.

Onward and upward!