phoenix rising kimono

July 20, 2013 by Tien Chiu 1 Comment

Wet-finished samples

I have been weaving more samples! After a ten-inch length of plain weave, I wove four inches with a metallic gold weft, like so:

I didn’t like it on the loom – too gaudy – but persevered, because often the cloth looks quite different after wet-finishing.

And so it does!

sample woven with metallic gold weft, after wet-finishing

While it is still gaudy if viewed with the light reflecting directly off it, under most light it just looks regal, and a bit glittery. It’s beautiful.

Which is a pity because it’s such a royal pain in the butt to weave! The metallic gold polyester embroidery thread is stiff and springy, and leaps off the pirn at the slightest opportunity. I continually had to stop an adjust the thread in the shuttle.

Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately?), the woven fabric is too stiff to use in the skirt of the ball gown. But I am considering using it (or something similar) in the kimono, where drape is less of an issue. If I weave a flame pattern into the fabric, that could be quite beautiful. Or it could distract from the phoenix pattern. Hmm.

I’ve also discovered that my plain weave fabric is far from perfect. The trouble is that warp floats are very difficult to detect while weaving, but blindingly obvious on the wrong side:

Here I may have been changing sheds too fast for my loom to keep up. I slowed down later in the sample and the results are flawless (in the metallic gold weft section, anyway).

I was also having trouble with the shafts jumping off their hooks in this section. B. suggested using lineman’s pliers (big heavy pliers) to close up the hooks slightly, which I did. Yay! No more shafts leaping off their cables.

The plain weave, by the way, is nicely iridescent:

plain weave fabric sample, scrunched to show off iridescence

And, finally, here is my first sample, off the loom and wet-finished:

The sample at the top, a pattern of huck lace squares, was not successful. It’s pretty, but having floats in some sections and not others results in different take-up between the two sections, which in turn results in slack threads in the section with the squares. I had hoped that, with a very fine warp, the difference would not be enough to cause problems, but after only three squares I was already feeling slackness in the threads. So I aborted that particular draft, and will try re-drafting something else interesting.

On the agenda for today? The farmer’s market, making truffles, and a friend’s party. I live under a rock, but I am occasionally a social creature. Besides, I need somewhere to bring the treats I’m making!

Truffle flavors? MacAllan 12 Scotch whiskey (a perennial favorite), and maybe some orange curd truffles, and some goat cheese and honey truffles. The last two are among my favorite flavors, but they’re too perishable to make in my annual November frenzy, so I rarely get a chance to trot them out. Delicious, though!

I’m also planning on weaving some samples for the skirt of the ball gown, using a fine tram silk. I have two colors, orange and dark ruby red – I’m hoping the ruby red works out, because it’s pre-dyed and pre-coned, and dyeing/winding off tram is a real pain.

And, finally, I need to do some more work on Creating Craft. Lots to do this weekend!

July 8, 2013 by Tien Chiu 2 Comments

Forks in the road

I spent the long weekend blocked on both book and ball gown, but I finally solved both problems yesterday. I’m splitting both of them into two projects, making a total of four projects total.

For the ball gown, Stephanie was spot on: there are really two garments lurking in the dress. The first is a very simple cut – most likely a kimono – to show off the phoenixes. The second is the ball gown I’ve been designing, sans phoenixes. The first has a simple cut to show off a complex fabric. The second has a simpler fabric, which flows with the complex cut of the dress. Both will be beautiful, I think.

Here’s what I’m considering for the kimono:

Very simple cut, phoenixes plus color gradation. I experimented with adding a sun in the center panel to provide a focal point, and decided it overcomplicated things. If I need to add interest, I will do it with beading and/or other embellishments.

Also very simple to weave: solid background and painted-warp phoenixes. Probably a hand-dyed commercially woven silk for the red background parts. I am fighting the temptation to “bling it up” with gold thread in some of the phoenixes. I am not doing hand-manipulated techniques at 100+ picks per inch, thank you very much.

My reasoning for this approach is pretty simple: the phoenixes are large individual motifs that do not take well to being cut. It is also impossible to seam lengths of fabric together because, unless you are a better weaver than I am, there will always be some uneven-ness in beat, meaning the phoenixes won’t totally line up, so the seam will be super obvious.

So if you want to avoid diagonal seams and vertical seams, loom-shaped garments are the way to go. I rarely go in that direction, but for this cloth, I think it’s appropriate.

I will probably use heavier thread for this and switch the threading to a double two tie threading, which will give smoother shapes, and keep the phoenix size about the same. I’m thinking 60/2 background warp with a 30/2 pattern warp. I intend to bleach the silk beforehand to get the absolute brightest yellow possible in the pattern warp.

The ball gown remains more or less the same, except with more painted warp “flames” in the two drapes, instead of phoenixes.

Which do I work on first? That’s an excellent question. I’d say the kimono, as I have a better chance of finishing that before the Convergence deadline, except that I’m halfway through putting a sample warp onto the loom, for the skirt of the ball gown. I hate to just take it off and toss it, but it will also take months to weave off, so I’m not really sure what to do. I am seriously dubious that, with a very fine silk warp, I can take it off and preserve it somehow.

With the book, I realized that I had really written half each of two books – one aimed at novice designers and one aimed more at intermediate designers looking to improve their skills. I need to decide which book I’m writing first, and fill in exercises, etc. for each audience. A difficult call since my heart is with the intermediate designer book, but the one for beginners will be much easier to sell, and will presumably fuel sales of the intermediate book, if it comes out after the beginners’ one.

Oy. I do have a way of complicating things in the process of simplifying them, don’t I?