It's Conference Season!

 

I write this as I'm sitting in the airport in Grand Rapids, MI, waiting for a much-delayed flight to Detroit and then home. What better time to post about the just-finished Michigan Handweavers Conference in Holland, MI? And why not start with a classic conference photo -- that of a group of weaver-friends going out to dinner after a long day in the classroom?

Pictured above, from left to right: Cathy McCarthy, Janney Simpson, Martha Town, Susan Moran, Nancy Riele, Martina Celerin, Nadine Cloutier, and me. Everyone in the photo is either a teacher, a conference organizer, a student at the conference, or any combination of the three. You can imagine what we talked about -- for instance, the exhibits....

There are some 19 guilds in Michigan, and one exhibit featured collected works from many of these guilds -- including this beautiful series of blue vertical panels created by members of Woodland Weavers. Whether they were woven, knitted, felted, printed, quilted, or hand-dyed, these vertical panels all related to the exhibit's focus on the lakes and landscape of Michigan. Here's a closeup of one of the pieces, which included cyanotype prints and painted images of white-pine needles. (I apologize for not crediting the artist, as I did not take down the name.)

Here's an image from a rug-hooked piece by Nadine Cloutier, using hand-dyed wool strips to create a sun-soaked lake view. I love the tactile quality and the varying directions of the wool strips.

Martina Celerin was the keynote speaker, who spoke about her dimensional weavings. They all begin with a simple frame loom she builds herself for warping and weaving tapestry-like backdrops of natural scenes. She then uses a number of techniques, including felting and weaving, to extend her pieces beyond the plane of the the loom outward as much as 12 inches. It's difficult for a photo to portray the depth of her creations, but here is an image of one of her recent pieces, featuring a trail meandering through the forest. (The bright blue color in the upper righthand side of the image is from paper bags in the background, unfortunately, that you can see through the open yarns on the loom.)

You can find out more about Celerin by clicking here.

So much to see -- and touch! Speaking of touch, the workshop I taught was based on my book, Weaving Outside the Box: 12 Projects for Creating Dimensional Cloth. To my surprise and delight, people in the workshop took off with their versions of the projects in the book -- in some cases, improving upon them, in my view. 

This sample by Nancy Riele, using the ancient weave technique known as Rippenköper, had whimsical, flowing horizontal lines. It's woven in 8/2 Tencel on a warp of 60/2 silk in a turned-twill design. I consider her sample way better than the piece I wove for the book ;o)

Among the takeaways from this workshop is that textured weaves call for either specialized (energized) yarns, fulling and differential shrinkage, and/or structure -- any one of these or varied combinations of the three. Finishing is key. Below is a photo of the work of Cory Zann, showing the difference between her fabric on the loom and after washing. Again, this is a turned-twill structure on a 60/2 warp, in her case using a silk/stainless-steel yarn for the weft.

Cindy Root, president of the Michigan League of Handweavers, chose to weave a 4-shaft project on a gradient warp of 16/2 bamboo, using a weft of 18/2 Jagger Spun merino and a supplemental weft of embroidery cotton. The supplemental weft is used to draw the fabric in horizontally, compressing it so that only portions of the wool are exposed in finishing. This means that only some portions of the wool will full, creating pleats where the weft yarns have shrunk and gathered the warp yarns together densely. Here's Cindy's shibori-tightened fabric before it's washed with warm water and agitated with soap. After it's dried a bit, but still damp, she will remove the shibori ties and have a permanently pleated scarf.

Gail Pilgrim was also working on the Rippenköper structure -- but weaving it in on a 20/2 cotton warp using 8/2 cotton in the weft. She's doing research for a story planned for Heddlecraft magazine looking at hand towels in a variety of structures. In addition to working with cotton wefts, she decided to try a weft of 18/2 Jagger Spun merino, just to see whether the results were worthy of weaving a scarf somewhere down the line (or down the warp). Here's that sample, below.

As it is with many workshops, not every project is complete at the end. And since this workshop emphasized the importance of using specific finishing techniques, some weavers chose to finish their projects at home, after the workshop -- as with this 4-shaft deflected doubleweave scarf by Naomi Fletcher, woven with 10/2 cotton in the warp and weft, with a mid-section that includes Colcolastic yarn by Venne, drawing the mid-section in dramatically. I'm hoping she'll send me some photos of her results that I can then share with the group.

Some samples were finished, however (finished meaning washed with warm water and soap and then rinsed), as with this sample below by Martha Town. She wove it on a hand-painted warp of 60/2 silk with navy stripes and jewel-tone-painted stripes and a weft of 120/2 silk, using a turned-twill structure that pleats naturally. Note the subtle yellow accents in the weft every few inches, which add interest to the sample.

Thanks to MLH for a wonderful conference -- and to everyone in my workshop for an experience that I didn't want to end! And finally, thanks to you 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...." 

Shibori with Osage Orange, Indigo, and a Bit of Cochineal

The fabric is a cotton/linen jersey I bought from Mood (the official fabric store for Project Runway) in New York City. Above, a detail that shows a color I take great pride in: turquoise! It doesn't appear throughout, of course, but if you look at the shading on the perimeter of the golden rectangles, there it is. Turquoise is hard to achieve with natural dyes, at least for me, and yet it's one of my favorite colors.

"Sawdust, Leaves and Bugs" is what I like to call the combination, and it's the title of a course I hope to teach soon at the Weaving and Fiber Arts Center. First, I immersed the entire fabric in a vat of osage orange dye, purchased from a friend, David Barnet, who is a master woodworker with the Rochester Folk Art Guild. (For more on this talented group of people, click here.) Second, I did some tying and clamping -- using techniques that are jokingly called "dirty shibori" -- before immersing it in a vat of cochineal. In this case, the cochineal wasn't as bright, perhaps because I used the vat once before: It doesn't really show up on this fabric, other than lending a red-gold hue in the center of the rectangles above.

The last and best part, of course, was to dip the fabric five times in an indigo vat. Before dipping, I used a number of shibori-resist techniques: arashi, where I wrapped and tied it around a piece of PVC pipe; knotting, in which I simply tied four overhand knots in a length of fabric; folding and clamping with rectangular blocks of wood; and folding and securing with closepins.

My favorite results are on the back (pause for snarky comment: of course), where I used the arashi-shibori technique of wrapping the fabric around a PVC pipe and then tying with cord.

 This is the back of the garment

A closeup of the back, showing that elusive turquoise

I made another top, using similar techniques, and the results were completely different. My thinking is that the amount of fabric exposed to the dyes was very different in the two garments, which meant that the color blending was entirely different as well.

Sawdust, leaves, and bugs yield wonderful results! Thanks for reading!

Teaching Weaving and Shibori with Natural Dyes: A Workshop at Parsons in NYC

Above, first weaving ever by Fatimah Fahmy 

A couple of months ago my friend Joy Duskin asked me to team teach with her at Parsons School of Design in New York. Our task was to work with students of Professor Luciana Scrutchen, a good friend of Joy's, introducing them to weaving and shibori with natural dyes. Hard to say no! "Lucci," as she prefers, had rented space at the Textile Arts Center in Greenwich Village so that we would have access to looms and a dye kitchen.

Left to right: Fatima Fahmy, Joy Duskin, and Lucci Scrutchen 

We spent all day Saturday prepping looms (sigh) and working with students to make sure all 12 of them completed a 12-inch sample on the loom. Because they were students in fashion design, it seemed to me, they couldn't keep themselves from designing as they wove. Every sample was different and everyone played with a variety of yarns to achieve interesting textures and colors. Below are a few examples of what they did.

Solange Parris with her first weaving

Agatha and her first project

Han Ling and Rachel Chen with a sample they wove together

The plan was for everyone to weave a 12" sample using the woven shibori techniques of Catherine Ellis and then to dye them the next day with natural dyes. One slight problem: everyone was so pleased with their sample that they refused to risk dyeing it! OK, on to Plan B: Have them dye fabric as well, using shibori techniques like stitching and pole wrapping (arashi shibori).

A piece of cotton muslin, stitched and wrapped around a pole and dipped in a vat of madder 

A couple of Lucci's fellow faculty members joined us to do some natural dyeing. Above:
Julia Poteat and one of her shibori samples using madder, indigo, and cochineal

Joy, who holds an M.F.A. from Rochester Institute of Technology, 

brought along an extensive collection of shibori samples.

Joy demonstrated how she achieved an accordion-fold with one sample, first folding it in pleats and then wrapping the folded piece around a pole before dipping it in an indigo vat. Beautiful texture and surface design!

One editorial comment: Parsons does not, at this point, have classes in hand-weaving or hand-dyeing -- but, judging from the enthusiasm and natural talent of the students, I do hope that it does sometime in the near future! Thanks so much to Lucci and Joy for inviting me. I believe I learned much more than I taught. To find out more about the Textile Arts Center, which has a studio in Manhattan and a larger one in Brooklyn, click here. And to learn more about Parsons School of Design, click here.