Save the date - fiber art show in November

Hand-dyed, handspun yarn in see-through window-check scarves.

See these and other works at Designing Weavers' Art for the Home, Body, and Soul show and sale, coming up Nov. 22-23 in Manhattan Beach, CA.

Dye Day Blah Results - and a Pleasant Surprise

It was a beautiful day to spend at the Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens for the annual Fiber Arts Day. I was one of the dyers again (our fourth year now!). We had our usual beautiful setting under a nice shade tree beside the herb garden. I had fun sharing about dyeing and the fiber arts with the hundreds of visitors coming through the Gardens.

My dye results were less than successful, the beauty of the day notwithstanding. Out of my four dyepots I'd planned, only one - the madder - turned out as I'd hoped. One didn't even make it as far as getting the yarn in.  The other three are pictured here. From left to right, olive leaves (alum mordant), olive leaves (copper mordant), madder (alum), madder (copper), avocado pits (alum), avocado pits (copper).

After a long day with less-than-desireable results, it was a super pleasant surprise to come home to a package on my doorstep from Colorado.  Schacht Spindle Company gifted me a beautiful shuttle, complete with a note from Barry Schacht. It made my day!

Another Dye Day

Yesterday was the third annual Fiber Day I've participated in at the Huntington Library and Gardens.  Weavers and spinners were there demonstrating, as well as us dyers.  The dyeing we do at this event feature dyestuffs from plant materials.  This year I tried dyeing with kamala (Mallotus philippensis) and indigo (Indigofera tinctoria).

Top row, kamala on wool premordanted with (left to right) iron, copper and alum.  Bottom row, left to right, indigo on unmordanted wool, and indigo overdip on the same three kamala-dyed as above.  The indigo was such a strong color it overpowered the yellows, so I got teals instead of the greens I was after, but still pretty.

Another dyepot

Navy overdye.

Fuchsia in the dye pot

Doing a little dyeing today.

More of Nature's Colors

Here are the results of last Sunday's dye session for Fiber Arts Day at the Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens.  These are, from left to right: madder, cabbage (alkaline bath), cabbage (acidic bath), wild lettuce, walnut leaves, nasturtium blossom.  And from top to bottom, the mordants were alum, copper and iron.

The madder came out less orangey than usual.  I'm pleased with these more muted reds.  The cabbage was just to try, for fun; I'm not sure how washfast or lightfast those will turn out to be.  The nasturtium blossoms were a disappointment: despite the beautiful magenta-colored liquid they made, the wool only turned a dull beige.

The most spectacular for me was the walnut. Can you believe this dark, rich brown came from fresh green leaves?  And it is supposed to be its own mordant due to the tannins.  I can't believe I've lived with this walnut tree for 24 years and have never dyed with it.  I'll certainly be doing more with walnut.

Dye Day at the Gardens Again

This coming Sunday is Fiber Arts Day at the Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens.  It was such a nice day last year I'm participating again.  Fellow SCHG member Jamie and I will be dyeing using various plant materials, across the Herb Garden from the Tea Room.  Other area guild members will be demonstrating spinning and weaving.

Here are the colors I got at last year's session, using madder, Navajo tea, cutch and logwood.  This year I've selected a less exotic selection of local plants I hope will be easier for visitors to relate to:  madder again because it grows like a weed in my yard, black walnut leaves, a weed called wild lettuce, and ... red cabbage!  What colors will I get with these?  Join us at the Gardens to see, or you'll have to wait until I post the results!

My Blues Weaving

Work in progress.  Slit tapestry weave on a floor loom.

Lately I have noticed that my most contented and optimistic moments are those when I am sitting at the loom, weaving. At other times there are the normal doubts and fears, but in those minutes and hours at the loom, everything feels as if it's in the right place and headed in the right direction.

My Blues Palette

After all those dyeing sessions, it's time to weave!  Here are the colors I am now working with.  From top to bottom, Tints, tones, direct modulation, and two levels of tints of the direct modulation series.

Notice in the grayscale version that the tints are reducing the saturation by lightening the value of the blue, while the tones are reducing it while leaving the value constant.  The direct modulation is almost constant value as well.  (Is it my imagination, or does it seem to be slightly darker in the middle of that series?)

One thing I did not include was a gradation of the blue to black by adding increasing amounts of  black (or rather a very dark gray, since I was dyeing white yarn).  So the darkest value is also the value of my most saturated blue.

Saturation studies continued - direct modulation

A third (and to me the most interesting) way to make a color less intense (less saturated) is by direct modulation.  Direct modulation is adding amounts of the direct complement of the original hue.  The direct complement is the hue directly opposite on the color wheel.  In this case my original hue is blue, and its direct complement is an orange.  In a gradation from 100% blue, through 50/50, to 100% orange at the other end of a series, the colors will be less saturated toward the middle of the series, and if they are true complements there should be a point at which there are "equal" amounts of red, yellow and blue, forming gray - a completely neutral, unsaturated color.

For my first direct modulation dye session, I guess I was thinking of orange as the color of an orange, that is, of the skin of an orange.  Well, it turns out that is more of a golden color.  So when I mixed this color with my blue, there was no point at which I got anywhere near a gray.  Instead I got a nice selection of greens.  There was never enough red in my orange to neutralize the blue and yellow.

For this particular blue, I needed a redder orange, more like a tangerine.  My second trial was more successful.  See the grayish hues in the middle of the series?

I think these more muted colors are so interesting that I did a couple more series using less dye, to get tints of the direct-modulated series.

More saturation - tones

Another way to desaturate a color is by making tones of the color.  Toning a hue down is adding a gray that is the same tonal value (lightness or darkness) of the original hue.






 
To do this with dyes on white yarn, I had to first find a gray that was the same relative value as my saturated color. So I dyed some grays using varying amounts of black dye on the same white yarn.  The grayscale version of the photo show that the blue is lighter than any of my trial grays.

So I tried again.This time I think the next lighter gray (labeled F) fits the best.

Then I used mixtures of this gray and my original blue to create the tones of blue.

Studying Saturation - tints

In our study subgroup of my guild, "Centered on Color & Fiber", this year we are focusing on two qualities of color, saturation and value.  For my exercise in saturation (aka intensity of a color), I have been playing with different ways to desaturate a color, or give it less intensity, when dyeing yarn.

One way is by adding white to the color, or in the case of dyeing, using less dye on white yarn.  Adding white to a color doesn't change its hue, it just makes its value lighter; these lighter colors are called tints of a color.

As I'd remembered from previous dyeing sessions, when you reduce the amount of dye in a linear manner, the darker more saturated colors in a series like this look closer in tonal value to each other than the lighter more pastel tints.

Here's a grayscale version of the same photo; some of the darker colors are hard to tell apart.

The darkest ball of yarn is dyed at a depth of shade (DOS) of 1.0.  This means that for every gram of fiber (yarn), I used 1 ml of a 1% dye solution.  You can use more dye and get even more saturated color, I guess until all the places on the fiber that can accept the dye are taken.  I didn't push that limit.  I'm just defining the DOS 1.0 color as my most saturated blue for this project.

UFOs

You know those UFOs (UnFinished Objects) that sit around for months or years?  I'm sure you have them.  This is one of those.  What is it, you ask?

Since the weather (finally) has cooled off a bit around here, I was thinking my teapot needs a jacket or "cozy".  I had started one from a project in a book some number of years ago, so I dug it out of the basket on the top of the bookcase where it had been collecting dust.

 It's pretty funky-looking.  It's knitted of wool in "short rows" for shaping, and then wet-felted.

It's too big for my teapot so I rolled up the hem.  I decided I really didn't care for the colors.  Too cold-looking for something that should be cozy.

So I overdyed it in golden yellow...

... yeah!  That's more like it.

After dyeing, I felted it a bit more and it fits the circumference of the teapot better, but it's still too tall.  I left the cuff edge out so it would show the unevenness of the edge of the felted fabric.

2014 Award Winner Fabric Appearing as Cushion Covers

I'm turning my Updraft, Downdraft fabric into giant accent-pillow covers.  These are big; they fit a 24"x24" pillow form.  Cotton, hand-dyed, double weave with sprang.  The colors grade from saturated to shades and tints, so each cover is different.  Hand-dyed linen backing, zipper closure.

The fabric is the 1st Place winner of the Handweavers Guild of America Convergence 2014 Yardage Exhibit Ebb & Flow.  It also won the Virginia Harvey Award for Use of Color from the Seattle Weavers Guild.

They'll be available for sale at the upcoming events below, and online after that.

SCHG Weaving & Fiber Festival
Sunday, November 2, 2014
10 a.m. - 4 p.m.
Torrance Cultural Arts Center, Torrance CA

Designing Weavers Holiday Sale
Saturday & Sunday, November 22 & 23, 2014
10am to 4pm each day.
Women's Club of Sierra Madre
550 W. Sierra Madre Blvd., Sierra Madre, CA

Predator at Complexity Exhibit in Rhode Island

Predator
19" H x 14" W
Cotton, hand-dyed wool.
Twill and plain weave, forming supplementary warp worked in double-layered sprang technique.

If you're going to Convergence, be sure not to miss this exhibit at nearby Brown University.  See my piece "Predator" and 98 other exquisite woven works.

Complexity
The 2014 Exhibition
An International Juried Exhibition
by Complex Weavers

July 14 - August 14, 2014
Cohen Gallery, Brown University
Providence, Rhode Island

The jungle challenge - my answer titled: "Predator"

You are deep in a jungle. You look around and try to absorb this wondrous new world. Many colors, shapes and textures surround you, but you can only choose 3 of those colors to make up 75% of your piece. You must also use a weave structure to represent something you see in your jungle for 50% of the finished piece. The jungle does not care what size or shape you create, but your creation must be woven or knotted/interlaced/spun/felted, but not knitted or you may not make it out alive!

The above was the 2013 Challenge issued to members of the Southern California Handweavers' Guild.  On the right is my answer to the challenge.  I'm not sure I got all those percents right, but I'm sure there's a way to make it fit.

The surrounding fabric is what I showed in earlier posts, a 3/1 twill where the thick wool and thin cotton alternate in the warp.  In the middle section, the wool was left unwoven while the cotton made a plain weave background for the sprang.  The sprang this time is double-layered sprang, with holes or slits left so pieces of the layers could interchange and wrap around one another like vines in a jungle.  The striped vine-like bits represent a tiger prowling around in the foliage.

Last weekend was the big reveal at our guild meeting, and I was all set to show my answer here as well, but my camera and computer decided they weren't on speaking terms.  So I had to wait for a new cable to arrive before I could get the photo uploaded.

As usual it was really fun to see all the different ways that my fellow guild members had come up with to answer this puzzle or challenge, and their beautiful and creative results.  They will all be displayed at our annual Weaving and Fiber Festival, Sunday November 3rd at the Torrance Cultural Arts Center, Torrance, California.

How would you have solved this challenge?

Serendipity strikes again

The green/orange/black weaving/sprang is off the loom.  I made quite a bit of warp because I wasn't sure whether I would have to make a second attempt at the sprang part.  It came out all right, so I just wove off the rest of the extra warp, and I really like the look of this fabric.

It looks almost like a warp-dominant or warp-faced plain weave, but structurally it is a 3/1 twill.  Every other warp is a dark green cotton that doesn't really show unless you look very closely.









I especially like the back side, where the black weft and the dark green warp make a tiny outline of each dot of color.

Funny thing is, I would never have set out to design and weave this fabric.  The colors, the stripe sequence, the very close sett... all were designed for a certain effect in the sprang portion of my piece.  The woven portion was just to be a border or frame.  But I might actually think to weave something like this again.

I'm dyeing to start my next project

I did some more dyeing.  This time with wool.  I enjoy dyeing wool and silk because as long as you measure the dye for the fiber weight, the dyebath exhausts completely, or nearly completely, which makes rinsing a piece of cake.

This as opposed to dyeing cotton with fiber-reactive dyes, which also happens to bond with water, or maybe it's with the washing soda in the water... anyway, with me it's always a question of which will happen first:: will I get all the dye rinsed out of cotton, or will I get bored with all the rinsing.  But with this wool, it all rinsed out in 3 or 4 rinses, and a couple more for the black which had extra dye to make sure I got maximum depth of shade (DOS).

These are not skeins but rather some warp that I pre-measured.  I wanted several different colors but I didn't want to process them each one at a time, so I made the dyebath in several mason jars, and put the jars into a simmering bath to heat them.  Because the yarn was packed fairly densely in the jars, it did not have enough room for the dye to take evenly.  This splotchiness is especially evident with the green in the lower left of the photo.  If even dyeing was a requirement for this project, I wouldn't have done this, but the greens are supposed to represent foliage, so I'm okay with the result.

Oh, and for anyone keeping score, yes, the post title is a pun.

My dyeing day

I had a fun day dyeing some silk noil for my next project.  I didn't calculate or measure the colors, just mixed the colors without a lot of planning.  I did have a concept in mind, however:  to have my dark, cool colors be more or less the color complement of my light, warm colors.

I am doing a "painted warp" to try combining plain weave and sprang in a finished piece.  I plan to alternate the dark and light colors in the weave to get a pattern effect in interlaced sprang.  Yes, I'm finally getting back to the sprang experiments.  Read about the sampling for this project here.

Here are the light colors right after "painting", and before steaming.

Madder - Rubia tinctorum

I did some dyeing last weekend with madder root.  I planted some a few years ago, and it has taken over the back yard like a weed, so I decided I need to learn to like reds and pinks.

The fabrics in the top of the photo were some samples I thought might be towels, but they are a little stiff, so I'm going to repurpose them into something else.  The photo is showing both faces of the fabric.  The warp was kind of a tan color and I think the overdye improved the color.

The bottom fabric is just some unbleached muslin I threw in the pot.  I had the pieces of root in the dyebath with the fabric.  The darker spots of red are where they made direct contact with the fabric.