A Visit with Eva Stossel

 

Above: My favorite piece among all the weaving I've seen by Eva Stossel, in networked double weave on 16 shafts, with warp and weft in 20/2 cotton. I really like the tesselation effect.

Which brings me to the point of this blog post: Eva Stossel (you can visit her blog at www.evasweaving.wordpress.com) is, in my humble opinion, one of the best weavers around the country these days. 

Take a look:

Another 16-shaft network-drafted double weave, again using tesselations. Even more interesting: If you walk far enough away from the photo on your screen, you'll see an overall pattern in this piece, sort of a vertical-ellipse shape, made by the squares themselves!

Here's a detail:

How did she DO that? I figure it's two colors in the warp and weft of the top layer (white and red) and two colors in the warp and weft of the bottom layer (purple and red), and her design is networked but not paralleled. And then she shifted equal-sized rectangles in both threading and treadling throughout the piece to achieve the tile-like effect.

And how about this?

Tied Lampas in 4 blocks, in a clean, refreshing design (and, by the way, using complementary colors of green and red and purple and yellow, which add to the aesthetic appeal).

And yet another:

Woven moiré in pearl cotton on 16 shafts

Eva is really generous in sharing her drafts -- both in her blog and as WIFs when asked (although at times, rightfully, she does keep some designs to herself). Her writing is clear and concise, making her blog a gift to the weaving community at large. 

I had no idea where she lived until I happened to mention how I admired her work to my friend Hedy Lyles, herself an excellent weaver from Willow Grove, PA. Both Hedy and Eva belong to the Philadelphia Guild of Handweavers.

One of Hedy's twill scarves, on display at Convergence 2024 in Wichita in July.

Come to find out, Eva and Hedy are friends! Over a weekend when I was visiting family in Philadelphia, Hedy and I took a road trip about an hour out of town to visit Eva. It was a pleasure to finally meet her. She seemed surprised when I told her her blog has fans nationwide!

Hedy, left, and Eva, right, talk weaving. Note one of Eva's designs at the bottom of the photo, woven to create an Ikat look.

I remember Hedy telling me that she weaves on a 16-shaft Macomber loom, which surprised me, as I expected her to rely on the convenience of a compu-dobby. It takes a lot of strength (and a lot of tromping) to weave on 18 treadles to lift the cast-iron shafts of a Macomber!

Eva's Macomber, with an end-feed-delivery shuttle poised on the shuttle race.

She samples religiously and keeps detailed records, which is exactly what all the great weavers do, in my view.

Eva told us that often she will use her 4-shaft Structo for sampling -- clearly not to see how a 16-shaft pattern works, but just to see how the warp and weft yarns weave together. I consider that a noble endeavor, one that never even occurred to me ;o)

Eva with her files

More samples, more notes

Really, I wanted to meet Eva because I so admire her work and her generosity -- and I wanted to learn something about how a master weaver works. Of course, you can't access a person's mind and discover the source of their creativity (don't I wish). What I did learn: Start with a good idea, sample it, sample more, make sure the yarns and colors work, dig deeper, keep weaving, keep learning. That's the essence of what it takes.

And, as is so often the case, I found how much I enjoy making friends with fellow weavers. Thank you, Hedy and Eva, for a delightful afternoon!

Not the most flattering photo of any of us (from left: me, Eva, and Hedy) but it documents a meeting of hearts and hands, you might say....

Thanks for reading!

Scenes from a Class on Shibori with Natural Dyes

Two samples of arashi shibori on cotton by Joan Rusitzky, 

using osage orange (gold color) and indigo.

"Sawdust, Leaves, and Bugs: Shibori with Natural Dyes" is the full name of the class, a workshop I taught over the weekend at the Weaving and Fiber Arts Center. Students brought in cellulose fabric (cotton, linen, rayon, and silk) for dyeing in three different vats: osage orange (for golden yellow), cochineal (for magenta) and indigo. We also did some discharging of dyes, using RIT Color Remover.

The results were wonderful. Students went from vat to vat, clamping, tying, stitching, folding, and otherwise creating shibori resists that allowed colors to blend or contrast in a number of patterns.

Above: Barbara Mauger dyed a silk scarf, beginning with a base of osage orange 

(made lemon yellow because it was simmering in a copper pot), 

then clamping with spiral forms and finally dipping in an indigo vat. 

The red color on the lowest spiral comes 

from a bit of old dye that was still on the spiral resist.

We learned that natural dyes could successfully be discharged using RIT Color Remover. I had used this often on man-made dyes but had no practice on natural dyes. Nor could I find anything online to document that it would work. So we found out for ourselves that it was effective, with the vat being hot enough (about 160 degrees Fahrenheit) and enough time elapsing (at least 15 minutes) for the fabric to sit in the vat. Another insight: Michel Garcia recommends that cotton fibers will work better in natural dyes if they are pre-mordanted in aluminum acetate rather than the traditional aluminum sulfate mordant. I looked this up online and found that an over-the-counter pharmaceutical product, commercially named Domeboro, is made of aluminum acetate. That's what we used, at approximately one package of Domeboro per one ounce of fabric. It worked great!

Typically, it's hard to get saturated colors on cotton fabric using natural dyes. I believe (and this is not based on research but rather on my own assessment) that it does help intensify the colors.

Eleanor Hartquist used long cords to scrunch up her fabric, 

which we think was either cotton or linen. Not sure. 

The brown color you see here was a base color, 

achieved by dipping first in osage orange and next in cochineal.

Eleanor's fabric, after immersing in cochineal once again, then opening the fabric, 

 then again folding and clamping it and immersing it in indigo.

On the final day of class, just for fun, I made a vat of onion-skin dye, which produces a lovely golden/rust color. Below is a photo of some silk yarn that Eleanor decided to wrap (an Ikat technique) and immerse in the onion skin dye.

Eleanor's onion-skin-dyed yarn, using Ikat techniques. The color in this photo 

may be skewing a bit toward the red end of the spectrum, but you get the idea! 

Lots of fun and color for a December weekend. I'm thinking of presenting anther workshop along these lines in the future, perhaps using madder, onion skins, and woad. Let's see, that would have to be named "Roots, Peels, and Leaves...."