The What and Why of Turned Weft Ikat

Combining commercial space-dyed yarn with my ikat dyed yarn.

Every time someone asks me why I don't just wind warps and ikat dye them instead of ikat dyeing lots of skeins and winding the warp after the yarn is dyed, I have to stop and ask myself the same question. Why don't I?

I found when I tried winding the warp first and planning my design in great detail, I had a hard time achieving the results I imagined. It was hard and frustrating. Although my method is not particularly fast (It takes me about 20 minutes to wind an inch of warp), it seems so easy and so full of surprises. It's as if the threads themselves have created the patterns for me. When I am weaving an ikat piece, it's like watching a beautiful painting happen before my eyes.

I have hundreds of balls of natural dyed ikat silk I've collected and been using since the 70's. They were dyed by many different dyers over the years. I can still add them to a warp, use them for embellishment, or use them in my wrapped wall pieces. They are like tubes of paint that never dry out.

I enjoy the spontaneity of designing a warp directly on the warping board. When I design in this manner, all "figuring out" thinking happens before I warp the loom. Dressing the loom and weaving the piece become more of a relaxing meditative process.

Beginnings, Endings, Middles, More Beginnings

Beginnings: I keep forgetting to post this luscious yarn. It must be that I am covetous as this is Laritza's yarn, not mine. It is spun from a blend of wool and her own alpaca, and she dyed it to use in her horoscope weaving. I will keep you posted as will she. I apologize for being slow on the uptake. Go click on her name and read a detailed account of color selection and the dyeing process.


Endings: I have one side twisted. I hated to take this weaving down off the wall. Until I finish twisting the fringe, I don't have to think about the washing part. The background weaving is a linen napkin woven by Virginia West of the Weavers Guild of Greater Baltimore
I attended their 50th anniversary banquet. There was a handwoven napkin at each place setting, and we all got to keep our napkin. That was just one marvelous detail of a grand celebration.

Middles: Weave a little everyday. Panel #5 of the Big Commission

More Beginnings: Here I am starting a shawl using Woven Words and Turned Weft Ikat (I haven't wound these 6 additional chains yet) for the warp and recycled cashmere for the weft. I will give you more details as I progress. The warp will be 30" wide, sett 24 epi (Bambu 12).

Waiting for the Yarn to Dry

The greatest blessing and joy of being a virtual gardener is a trip to the farmers market. This week I went with my dear friend Rozie. We spoke about (among many other things) ways to be more creative in ones life. When she dropped me off, she said "Now I have to go home and deal with these vegetables." I thought I would have to "deal" with my vegetables as well. But when I took them out of my canvas bags, I was intrigued by this week's selection and decided to arrange them in an artful still life. Aside from the first harvest of tender spring greens, this is time of year most anticipated. After reading "Animal Vegetable Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver, I have begun to eat vegetables and fruit in season and locally grown when I can. This meant no apples all summer. Those 2 honey crisp apples have been long anticipated. Honey Crisps live up to their name!
Another favorite of mine is Cranberry Beans. They are so much fun to pop out of their pods because each bean is unique and almost seems to be hand painted. Alas they do turn bean colored after they are cooked, BUT they cook in 20 minutes without soaking or anything. Of course, if I dried them I would have to soak them overnight and cook them for a long time. I freeze them, so I can enjoy fresh beans all year long. When I take a bag out of the freezer, they still take only 20 minutes to cook.


After I dealt with the vegetables, I decided to whip up a little bean, fennel, and corn soup. I didn't use any of the cranberry beans (I froze them). The beans on the left (I can't remember their name) I had never seen before. They were already shelled, so I don't know what their pod looks like either. They looked really yummy and mixed them with a little of the black beans.
I guess I should post a picture of the finished product since the soup is fabulous. I have plenty so I'll snap a picture at my next dinner.

Dye Day #5 The Drying

The sun came out for a brief instant, and I caught this moment with my handy camera. Notice my sophisticated drying rack. I pulled the skeins inside this morning since they were still not dry. It's been 4 days now, but who's counting. I haven't turned on my heat yet, so I don't know how much faster it will be inside although they are predicting rain today. I can tell it rained during the night as well. The patio is covered, so the skeins were only exposed to the damp, no direct rainfall.

Almost dry and much lighter, I still can't tell which one is navy and which one is midnight blue. Any guesses?

The skein on the right is bamboo, on the left 8/2 cotton. I do know they were both in the same dye bath. What can I say, the bamboo takes the dye so much better.

And here is the black. I don't mind the gray, but I now understand what people mean when they say black is hard to dye. They must have been trying to dye unmercerized cotton.

Once the yarn is dried, I will explain my method of Turned Weft Ikat and why I don't wind my warps first and tie warps instead of skeins.

A Cashmere Sweater Kind of Day

Who would have thought when I put it out to the universe that I would trade a scarf woven in
Turned Weft Ikat bamboo warp and a recycled cashmere sweater weft in exchange for 10 cashmere sweaters that I would meet a charming fellow who collects cashmere sweaters!


I know there is a knack for taking the sweaters apart before they are raveled, but I have not hit upon it regularly enough to be able to repeat the process. Usually it takes me about 8 hours to reduce a sweater to approximately a half a pound of yarn rolled into fairly tight balls. It is a sitting around chatting kind of job if you happen upon company that needs to keep their hands busy. Unknitting is quite satisfying if you haven't been the one to knit the sweater in the first place.

The only problem with these particular sweaters is they are in perfect condition. I am saved by the fact none of them looks good on me.

I won't go into the rest of my day because I have very little to show for it. I didn't even get out on the patio to pet my dyed skeins (or take a picture of them). I will try again tomorrow although I have a day full of meetings.

Dye Day #5 A

I had all these good intentions to take lots of pictures, but I only took this one of the dyeing process. I figured most dye pots look alike. The only reason I took this picture is because the dye formed some kind of foam on the surface. The other 2 pots were fine. So far I can't tell there is any negative results.

I did three dye pots. I thought I would be smart I do one pot of Jet Black, one of Midnight Blue, and one Navy. This would give me a chance to see how these colors work with the 8/2 unmercerized cotton. I did toss in a couple of skeins of bamboo, however, because I knew I would have room. What I didn't do was pay attention to which of the blues I put into which dye pot. Tomorrow I will show you what they look like almost dry. I have them hanging outside, and it is not supposed to rain for a couple of days.
I got so excited to see how my masking tape experiment worked that I unwrapped one before I took a picture. But here is a black with one of the blues. I will tell you now that the masking tape is an unqualified success. So even though my back still hurts from 5+ hours of rinsing, I learned something. Well, I learned a lot actually and will sum it up tomorrow complete with a revelation, a realization, and the answer to the question, "Why don't I wind my warps before I tie and dye the yarn?"


I have not abandoned my Weave Every Day goal (although I was too tired after dyeing and 5 hours of rinsing to do any yesterday). I am inching along on panel #5.

Dye Day #5 Eve

Here are 4 stages of Turned Weft Ikat, but not in any particular order. All the way to the right you see a bit of a cone of undyed 8/2 unmercerized cotton. The white skein is tied and ready to dye. Then there are a couple of dyed skeins (or what's left of them) resting on a finished Turned Weft Ikat towel. This picture has potential, but I will re-shoot it.


Once I got all of my wrapping supplies out, I realized this was what I was procrastinating about.
I just didn't feel like wrapping fifteen 2 oz skeins. Here we see my wrapping materials: Glad Kitchen Bags, Compactor (a stronger bag that works pretty well); Glad Tall Kitchen , Quick Tie (are a little too stretchy for me) ; the big roll is official Japanese Kasuri wrapping tape (I like the compactor bags better, but it is nice to have options); and pink carpet warp (good for detailed tying)



This is my reward. Some of my skeins are mostly white with just a few black accents. This means that I have to cover most of the skein in plastic. I have been having a hard time masking the majority of the skein without having a fair amount of seepage. I believe this is caused in part by the change in quality of the plastic bags. It had never occurred to me to use a coating of masking tape over top of the tall kitchen bag. I left some of the bag exposed on the left skein to see how much more or less seepage will occur.