phoenix cloak | Tien Chiu's Blog

May 3, 2013 by Tien Chiu

Two roads diverged in a wood…

…and I took both of them.

I’ve decided to weave off the yardage for that fabulous garnet wool/cashmere/Lurex yarn, and work on the design for Phoenix Rising, all at once. Since the book proposal is out at the editor’s for a week or so, I’ll have some free time to devote to both projects. I’ve already designed a phoenix pattern for the yardage (yeah, what can I say? I’m stuck on phoenixes), 5/1 against 1/5 broken twills. I’ll test it later this week to see if I like it. If not, I’ll try something else. There are plenty of neato designs to be done on a point threading.

So I have been designing the cloak fabric, and musing over how little yarn it actually takes to make 20 yards of fabric. Or perhaps how excessively large an amount of yarn 2 kg is. I’m going to use some 2/26 nm cashmere/silk blend for the warp, and the garnet yarn in the weft. At 24″ wide, I calculate this will weave approximately 25 yards of fabric. What will I do with 25 yards of fabric? No idea. I could weave “his and hers” cloaks, but since Mike is even less likely to wear a cloak than I am (which tilts it from “very unlikely” to “impossible”), this seems kind of silly. Or perhaps not. I like to knit theoretical socks, so what’s wrong with a theoretical cloak?

(Theoretical socks: lovely, luscious socks knitted from wholly unsuitable yarns. I like the feel of cashmere, or a softly twisted silk yarn. It’s OK. I display them proudly in my sock drawer, and very occasionally use them as bed-socks. And I enjoy knitting them.)

So I am preparing to weave samples. I have 150 grams of the silk/cashmere warp wound off and ready to dye, which I will do outdoors because we are having a heat wave here. The house does not have central air, only one window air conditioner (not enough to cool the entire house), so adding heat indoors doesn’t sound like a good idea. Fortunately we have both a camp stove and a rather robust burner meant for frying turkeys, both of which can be pressed into use. This weekend I plan to put on (and probably weave off) a 4-yard, 12″ wide warp sett at 30 ends/inch, in a 5/1 broken twill. Checking the sett, drape, weight of the finished fabric. I’m deliberately leaving the sett a little wider than usual, because the warp is much thinner than the weft (6500 ypp vs. 4500). That’s not ideal for the drape, but if I used a heavier yarn for the warp, the cloak would weigh approximately 4,000 pounds (well, okay, a few kg, but still too much).

The book blog is nearing its completion; I’m estimating I have only a month or so to go before I finish up the last chapter (that is being written for the book blog, anyway). It will leave a huge vacuum in my life – I’ve been writing it for the last seven months, so finishing will be quite a shock. Or maybe not. There is still a tremendous amount of editing work to be done, plus interviews with master artisans. I’ll probably be working on it for at least another year. And I do plan to continue posting to the book blog, though somewhat less frequently.

So stay tuned, Gentle Reader – photos of cloth and design sketches will be arriving shortly.

April 16, 2013 by Tien Chiu

Of cloaks and chocolates

I just ordered some yarn for the cloak. I wanted something with glints of metallic red, so I ordered this:

It’s about 4500 yards per pound, which may be a bit heavy – but if so, I can always weave it with a finer weft. Also, I may use it in the color it currently is, or I may kettle-dye it black, to make it an intriguingly variegated dark red/black. It’s from Colourmart, of course – my favorite yarn vendor.

No further progress on the cloak design, but some work on chocolates! The source for my custom printed transfer sheets is having a sale on custom work – they waive the (substantial) setup fee if you order 250 or more sheets – so I have drafted up a design and will be chatting to them about it today. I’m still tinkering, but here’s what I’ve got so far:

The photo shows the design on dark and white chocolate. Left to its own devices, the red is a little too transparent to show up well against dark chocolate (though it’s beautiful on white chocolate), so I added a gold border to make it stand out more. The main question in my mind is whether the printer can get the colors to line up precisely enough for this to look good – the border is only 1/16″ wide so even small differences will be highly visible. I’ll call them about this today.

I also need to tweak the “name” design (the “Tien Chiu” at the bottom) – I don’t think it looks good the way it is, and will likely change it to be plain gold. This will show up nicely on dark chocolate, and will look much better than the combined colors.

Between this order and some previous ones, this should give me enough custom designs to have every one of my chocolates a custom design, mostly Chinese paper-cuts. That will be really, really cool.

April 14, 2013 by Tien Chiu

OK, back to phoenixes

I’ve been in a bit of a post-project slump the last few days – helped liberally along by a to-do list that’s totally out of control. However, I decided to chuck away the to-do list for an hour or two today to brainstorm the next project. I had planned to use the lacquered paper with the taquete peacock feather motif I designed a year or two ago, but the more I thought about it, the less interesting it seemed. I’m not done with my phoenixes yet! and until I get that out of my system, everything else seems to be on hold.

So I spent some time going through my inspirational photos and surfing the Internet for photos, thinking of the next phoenix piece. I finally decided that I still wanted to go with my original idea – a cloak over a dress – and that I wanted to start with the cloak. I clipped a bunch of images into my Evernote notebook, did a few mindmaps and sketched out a few designs, and finally decided that I wasn’t going to be able to sketch my idea – I’d have to do a quick muslin mockup.

So here it is:

I’m envisioning the background as a black fabric (perhaps with streaks of metallic in it), woven with a ~7500 ypp yarn, fiber TBD but probably wool, unmercerized cotton, or silk noil. The phoenix will be an applique of silk in fiery colors, draft TBD. The flames at bottom will also be appliqued, using the two fabrics I’ve already woven – the turned S&W phoenix fabric and the darker, mixed double weave/twill phoenix fabric. For the flames, though, I might use thicker yarns than I did in my sample, partly to make it weave up faster but mostly to make the phoenixes larger and more visible.

I’m sort of tempted to do the phoenix in brocade to produce one very large phoenix motif. The problem with that is that, because I only have a 24″ loom, I’m going to have to piece together the back – the phoenix probably wouldn’t come out wide enough, unfortunately! I also don’t enjoy hand-manipulated weaves, so on the whole an applique seems like a better idea. But we’ll see.

No idea yet what I want to do with the front of the cloak. I’m guessing the same black fabric, with two bands of phoenixes running down the front opening, and maybe some embroidered fire designs – but it’s way too early to worry about that. For now, I’m just going to let the idea percolate, and maybe start thinking about yarns for the base fabric. I have a beautiful wool/Lurex mix that might be perfect.

Back to the to-do list! Someday, someday I’ll get caught up.