phoenix rising – Page 25

May 27, 2012 by Tien Chiu 1 Comment

Broken threads

I’m starting to dye the reeled silk I bought from John Marshall, and am running into the problems I more or less expected. I’m hand-painting the skeins, batching, and then rinsing very carefully to avoid tangling the skein. The skeins unwind in an orderly fashion (it helps that I tied each skein in 12 places before dyeing), but the thread is fragile, and difficult to wind off without breaking it in lots of places. Patient as I am, it’s driving me nuts.

I have been experimenting with different dyeing and unreeling techniques in an effort to reduce tangling. I want to use fiber-reactive dyes because Cibacron F fiber-reactive dyes has a much brighter color range than Lanaset acid dyes. The trouble is that soda ash damages silk. I had (being impatient) been painting the skeins with fiber-reactive dyes and then “batching” in the oven for an hour or two at 180F, but I think that may have made the thread more fragile. I’m now painting the skeins and letting them “batch” at room temperature for a day, in hopes that this will reduce damage to the silk. The final step would be to switch to acid dyes – probably Jacquard since I can’t get the colors I want in Lanaset – but I’m putting that off as long as possible, because non-Lanaset acid dyes just don’t have the washfastness I’m looking for.

I am also thinking of trying an immersion dyebath instead of painted skeins – I may try that later today.

I have also switched from my heavy wooden swift to a cheap plastic swift. The plastic swift is of relatively shoddy manufacture, definitely not as high-quality as the wooden swift – but is much, much lighter and so less inclined to break the yarn. I have switched from my electric bobbin winder to a (yikes!) hand-cranked cone winder, which goes slower and gives me more time to react to a tangle instead of simply breaking the thread.

All that and it still took me 3 hours to wind on 18.5 grams of thread yesterday, with lots of broken threads and knots. (Unacceptably many, I think.) I’m really hoping that the soda ash + high temperature had damaged the thread in these skeins – because if the skeins really are that delicate, I’m not sure how I’m going to unwind successfully.

Fortunately I do have enough skeins to experiment: I bought 1400 grams from John Marshall, which is about 3 pounds, and it comes in 50-gram skeins, so I have 28 skeins to play with. And I can always buy more – he said he’d bought about 1600 pounds of fine silk yarn, and while it isn’t all the same, I’m sure he has at least a few more kg of the stuff.

But if anyone has tips for unreeling fine thread, let me know!

May 20, 2012 by Tien Chiu Leave a Comment

Eclipse

B.’s birthday is coming up, so we went out tonight to celebrate at Pampas, a Brazilian restaurant in Palo Alto. As we emerged from the restaurant, we noticed that the sunlight had faded to an odd gray light, as if someone had put sunglasses on the entire world.

And they had! I had forgotten there was an annular eclipse of the sun today, reaching its maximum around 6:30pm, right around the point where we exited the restaurant. Of course, we couldn’t look directly at the sun, but with 80% of it eclipsed by the moon, we could create pinhole cameras between our fingers and look at the thin crescent of the sun.

And, of course, the trees made their own pinhole cameras in the gaps between the leaves, which turned into the loveliest repeating crescents:

eclipse crescents — eclipse, seen through tree leaves

I think these would make a lovely repeating pattern for a jacquard loom – too bad I don’t have one!

Meanwhile, I have dyed and started winding off one skein of the silk tram I purchased from John Marshall. It dyed like a dream and is winding off beautifully. And it is gorgeous! Because it is reeled silk that is only barely twisted, it’s unbelievably lustrous – far glossier than spun silk. Here’s a shot of it winding onto the pirn:

The photo unfortunately does not do credit to the luster, but it does show how fine the yarn is (you can just see the yarn coming off the pirn if you enlarge the photo). I’m guessing it’s about the same size as the 140/2 silk I plan to use as warp with it. I’ve dyed it a brilliant red-orange using Cibacron F “Scarlet” dye, and will be weaving it with Cibacron F “Gold” colored yarn, to give various shades of flame in the finished fabric.

I’m incredibly thrilled to have access to silk tram of such quality – I’ve been looking for good silk tram for years. And John Marshall said he now has 1600 pounds of fine silk yarn, from a Japanese warehouse that went out of business! Not all of it is tram, of course, but it’s all beautiful. I spent a long time drooling over them in his booth. I’m really looking forward to working with this.

But, alas, it will have to wait until after we’ve moved, which is looking increasingly like mid to late June.

Off to bed!

April 19, 2012 by Tien Chiu Leave a Comment

Two flame drafts

Work continues to be super busy – I have two extremely demanding projects and am monitoring a third – and the path to homeownership seems to be paved with last-minute snafus, so not a lot of creative time. I did, however, manage to crank out two drafts:

(Ignore the spots in the background design; it’s actually plain weave, but the resizing is adding what looks like dots. Click through to the large image to see how it really looks.)

Here’s the other one:

advancing twill flames, 1-3 vs. 3-1 broken twill

(Spots in the background are also an artifact of resizing; click through to the larger image.)

I chose an advancing twill threading because I wanted to create images of flames, but I needed the images to be larger than I could get out of straight draw. Advancing the twill threading gives a blurred enlargement of what’s in the liftplan – which, for fire, is just perfect. I did two versions, one in broken twills and one in broken twill/plain weave. The broken twill/plain weave one needs some work, as there are some unsightly floats in the liftplan which translate to unsightly floats in the fabric. But it does give me a general idea.

Why broken twill and plain weave, when the image is so much sharper (and the sett simpler) with all broken twills? Because I want a super lightweight fabric, for which plain weave is better. Fortunately they can both be woven on the same threading, so I can try both.

This is not the final draft, just a doodle – but it does provide a nice proof of concept. One thing that will need to change is the orientation of the flames – since the fabric will most likely be hung on the bias, the flames will need to go diagonally. Not a problem, just need to change the direction of the line.

Our home loan was finally issued yesterday, so closing should proceed on schedule today. If all goes well, the deed will be registered today, and we’ll finally own our first house!! I’m totally jazzed. Can’t wait to get those keys.

April 14, 2012 by Tien Chiu Leave a Comment

Second skirt prototype

I have been way too busy the last few days to do anything fiber-ish. Between straightening out last-minute snafus with loan documents for our house, and going to a full-day class on project management while staying on top of things at work, it’s been a busy time. Today is going to be just as busy, but I managed to carve out one precious hour to play with fiber stuff – if I don’t get to create for more than a few days I start getting really cranky, so I make time for it even if I’m totally behind on everything else.

So here is the result of one precious hour: a new skirt prototype.

This is constructed from squares of china silk, folded over at the corner and then gathered and hung on the bias, with bias-cut strips of silk organza and china silk dangling down in random places.

While this is undeniably rough, I like the idea and will be developing it further. I also plan to develop another version of the “thin strips” approach you saw in prototype #1, but I like this one for a couple of reasons. First, it uses bigger pieces of fabric. This will allow people to see the pattern I am weaving into the cloth – with thin strips there isn’t much reason to weave pattern into the cloth because you don’t see enough fabric in any one piece. Second, it offers more variety in the shape of the rags, which I think adds visual interest.

Here are two also-rans:

large yellow squares with random colored smaller squares

In this one, large yellow squares are put on, then smaller squares of varying colors are attached in random spots. I didn’t like it for two reasons. First, it doesn’t make visual sense, since the squares are put on at random so there is no sense to the colors. Second, it’s bulky at the top, since there are more layers of fabric there.

Then I tried putting on layers of random-sized squares, arranged in color order:

random sized squares of fabric, in color order

Didn’t like this either. While it’s not too bulky, it’s way too orderly, and not enough variety. Boring.

So I added some bias-cut strips of organza and china silk, in random colors, to arrive at the final prototype, which I’ll repeat here:

I like this. There is an underlying color progression (predominantly red at bottom to predominantly yellow at top), which saves the piece from total chaos, but the bias-cut ribbons break it up a bit and add variety, and also unite the layers of the skirt by providing the eye a vertical route from top to bottom. The organza also adds some textural variety.

I found it interesting how much visual impact those few bias-cut strips made! There’s a huge visual difference between second and final versions, and it’s all because of a few ribbons. Fascinating.

Okay, my hour’s up. Back to work!

April 9, 2012 by Tien Chiu 2 Comments

Productive weekend

So much happened the past few days that it’s hard to know where to start!

Perhaps I should start with the fabulous silk yarns that arrived today:

The bottom left silk is undegummed silk organzine at 83,000 yards per pound. The bottom right, undegummed silk organzine at about 30,000 yards per pound. The stuff on top, which looks a bit like dental floss, is actually tram silk from Lunatic Fringe Yarns – a virtually untwisted reeled silk, also at 30,000 ypp.

All this arrived just in time, since the highlight of Sunday was a trip to visit Lillian Whipple! Lillian, in case you didn’t know, is the Queen of Fine Thread Weaving, and she has all sorts of exquisite pieces in her house. As if that wasn’t wonderful enough, she was also gracious enough to let me page through binder after binder of Fine Threads Study Group samples (she’s been chairing the group since it started, sometime in the ’70s I think), looking for hints on how to construct a fabric with the breezy drape I was looking for.

It turns out not to be as difficult as I had feared. For a fabric of the weight I’m after, 140/2 silk in a predominantly plain weave fabric should be entirely sufficient. The sett for that, according to the samples I perused, should be somewhere between 60 and 90, 72 being most common. I won’t weave it completely in plain weave, though (that would be boring!) but will include network drafted sections of twill, in a flame or feather like pattern. The twill sections will collapse slightly (in theory anyway) which might add some interesting texture.

Regardless, it looks like I can “get away with” a yarn that’s about 30,000-35,000 yards per pound, at an almost-reasonable sett, and still get a nice floaty fabric. That’s a relief – I’ve worked a little bit with 120/2 silk, and I typically work at 50-60 ends per inch, so 72 ends per inch really doesn’t intimidate me.

Sharing top billing on Sunday was a trip to visit Sharon, my sewing mentor, where we draped one interpretation of the “ragged” skirt:

Admittedly it doesn’t look like much, but it’s a prototype, right? This one is composed of lots of bias-cut, raggedy-edged strips, done in china silk and organza. We liked the floaty look, the movement, and the variation in fabrics, but Lillian warned us that handwoven fabric, especially in slippery fine threads, will ravel incredibly fast. So we may wind up going with the second idea, which is bias-cut squares of fabric gathered on the top. I plan to drape a prototype of that sometime this week, using silk organza, china silk, and maybe a bit of chiffon. I may even get fancy and dye them different colors, to give a sense for how the colors play out against each other.

Finally, I managed to get some play time with the dyes. I was more experimental this time, so the results are not as spectacular as the first round, but I learned a lot, both in design and composition, from making these:

Experimenting with screen printed imagery — Experimenting with freeform imagery

The last one, obviously, was not at all successful design-wise; it was an experiment with wet-on-wet printing that didn’t work out particularly well. I may overdye it with some brown dye, to tone down the color contrasts and make it a bit less “busy”. Or I may just pitch it. Either way, I’ve tried something new, so I feel like I’ve gotten my $3 worth. ($3 being the cost of each T-shirt, from Dharma Trading Co.)

Finally, I finished off one set of dye samples – playing around with liquid bleach and bleach gel on variously dyed Procion MX and Cibacron F color swatches. No photos (sorry!), but the results were interesting. I plan to do some more samples later this week or next weekend.

Plans for this week:

Inventory, organize, and put away the stuff piling up in my studio (!)
Weave some more rayon chenille burnout samples to see if I can figure out how to stabilize the chenille
maybe, maybe try to weave some yardage for the CNCH Yardage exhibit- the deadline was extended to May 1, so I might just have time to come up with/weave something
Read the various books I’ve been collecting, on fabric design, surface design, etc.
Sign the loan documents for the house (the house will actually be ours next week, hurrah!)
Have fun!