Dye Day #4

I don't think I ever showed you a picture of how I wrap my skeins for ikat dyeing. I usually make the skeins 60" around. I buy some nice sturdy garbage bags, cut them crosswise in about 2" wide strips and wrap clockwise. It really doesn't matter which way you wrap.

Someone gave me a roll of Japanese Ikat wrap. I had never used it before and wanted to give it a try. It is a lot stiffer than the garbage bags and has a tendency to split vertically. It makes wrapping more difficult, but attaching the end of wrap is easier. The clear shiny is the official ikat tape. All of the ikat tape skeins are 50" around, so I could tell the difference between the two after I unwrapped them.

In this dye pot, we have 8/2 unmercerized cotton and a little bamboo and tencel. In a wild moment of equal practicality and impracticality, I bought 25# of unmercerized undyed cotton. Time will tell if I was wise or foolish. I was curious how it would take the dye having never dyed unmercerized cotton before. Then I got this crazy idea: Hey, what if I dyed a color other than black? Wildly I purchased cobalt!

Here you see me in my official dyeing shirt as I am removing all of the dyed skeins from the dye pot. I have to say this was the least messy and least anxiety producing dye day yet. I never wanted this to happen. I wanted to remain a virtual dyer forever. Who knows, perhaps my days as a virtual quilter and virtual gardener are numbered?

And here they are all unwrapped. The lower skeins are the tencel and bamboo. You can tell already the tencel and bamboo take the dyes much better, richer, deeper. I am sure they will all lighten up as they dry. It's been rather cool and damp, so it may take a couple of days before they dry. I'm not sure when I will get a test warp on the loom since I am in early countdown for my next teaching trip, and both looms have new warps on them already.

Big Commission--Chapter 5

I just cut off panel 3 (center panel)! I had to hang it right up. It has a lighter look than the first two, so I decided to put it in the center for now.

In case you are just tuning in, each panel is 20" wide and will become a blanket 90"x 100". The warp is ikat dyed bamboo, and the weft is un-knitted cashmere sweaters.

In addition to the goal of using recycled cashmere, my plan is to design the blanket without writing anything down. I don't know exactly what I am going to do next, so I will let the panels hang there for a while and wait until they tell me what to do next.

The next time the sun comes out, I will find a place outside where I can stretch out the whole length of each panel to see the entire piece. I hope I like what I see.

If it doesn't rain tomorrow, I will be dyeing some 8/2 cotton.

Looking Through My Photo Archive

Another title for this post could be: PROCRASTINATION

I can't seem to take a good picture of black on black weaving.
The warp is black shimmer chenille (remember shimmer chenille?) The weft is black chenille thrums saved from all of the black chenille scarves I wove in the 20Th century. I took me 4 years to accumulate enough thrums to make a shawl and almost that long to tie them all together.

Weaving black on black is something you want to do on a bright day. Using a white towel to wrap around the cloth beam was a great help as well.

If anyone happens to have any black shimmer chenille they are willing to trade, I am always interested.


Portrait of the Cabbage Goddess. I promised myself I wouldn't post pictures of food, but I couldn't resist.

Remember my Japanese Tree Peony? From time to time I gather up my favorite sticks and dead heads, throw on a natural tussah silk warp and weave up some holiday gifts.

Eggs in a Basket

Logistics: I am teaching at the NEWS Conference July 20-22. I am leaving for the East Coast on July 2, stopping off to visit family and friends in Baltimore. On July 12, I grab a train to New York to visit more friends and attend the International SAORI Weaving Conference on my way to NEWS.

What to do with the 50 lbs. of slides, weaving samples, and supplies, I pondered? Torn between not wanting to ship my samples and not wanting to drag a huge suitcase through New York, I opted for comfort (after extreme anxiety) and Fedex'd my suitcase today.

Back in 1962 when I was a weaving student at RISD, I was working on an original overshot design to be used in a three paneled blanket. I had completed the weaving portion and had begun joining the panels together. I decided to work on it over the Christmas break and shipped it home by bus (along with some clothes). It never arrived.

I had already invested 100 hours into the blanket. The good news (if there was any good news) was I got an "A" on the project anyway. I think the weaving instructor felt bad for me, and she knew I had woven the blanket. Looking back on it, I'm not sorry the blanket was lost because it wasn't fitting together as well as I would have liked, so I am blessed with not having to be eternally confronted with less than satisfactory results. AND I don't have to wonder how I would feel if my weaving gets lost in shipping.

Shipping remains a somewhat nail-biting experience for me, however. I have decided to take a philosophical attitude about it all. If the suitcase disappears, it is a sign that I should take up a new vocation.

I meant to take a picture of the contents of the suitcase, but I forgot in my haste to get it shipped. I did make a written inventory however.

Interestingly, there were a few pieces I just couldn't make myself pack. This is surely a lesson in non-attachment.

Another Lesson

Here's a pretty interesting story. Back in January I got a Color Horoscope Weaving commission from Charlene who saw a reference to me and my website on Sara Lamb's blog. I went right to Sara's blog to check out what blogs were all about. I was so taken with the idea I immediately set up a blog of my own. I asked Charlene to tell me her favorite color which would be the color I would use for the weft. In all of my previous commissions, my clients came to my studio and selected a color from the yarns on my shelf.

Color is so very subjective, and Charlene was not in my studio. She sent me an color rendition of a coat she wanted to wear with her horoscope shawl. HERE WAS MY MISTAKE. Instead of sending her a color sample card and having her select the weft herself, I matched the printed color square.
It's funny how a person can feel so good about something that misses the mark. I wove the shawl and sent it off fully expecting email squeals of delight. Silence... I finally wrote to Charlene to see if the weaving had arrived. She wrote back reluctantly and said she was very disappointed. The color didn't match her coat at all!

I said I was glad she wrote and that I would weave her another shawl. This time I would send a color card and have her select the warp. (all the while kicking myself that I hadn't thought to send Charlene yarn samples in the first place. What had I been thinking?!)

I was pretty mortified at first, but eventually came to appreciate a valuable lesson. The second weaving is much prettier, don't you think?

And now I will have another funny weaving story to tell when I'm teaching....

Warp Off, Warp On

I cut this horoscope shawl off the loom today. I will be hand-delivering this piece on Friday. It's so hot off the loom that the threads are still warm.

This horoscope shawl goes in the mail on Friday as well. I'm on a roll.

I just love how the horoscope weavings seem alike and different at the same time.

I've spent lots of time on the loom today and don't have much left over for writing. I do have a good story to tell about the piece going on the loom.

What I Did When the Chenille Wormed

In addition to throwing myself into the 3rd blanket panel, I went right to work on a Color Horoscope Weaving birthday commission (although I have another whole week before it is due).

I used 20/2 cotton tripled and sett at 24 epi.

It is quite relaxing to weave horoscopes.

I recently received an email from a soon to be student. She was trying to figure out from pictures exactly how I create Color Horoscope Weaving and said she was beginning to see how I used this technique to add interest to the tabby weaving.

It’s funny I have never looked at weaving this way. For me it is that tabby weaving holds together all of my weaving techniques.