12 Harness Turned Taqueté: From Dismal Failure to Success (with a Few Treadling Errors)

First, the success: Finally, after what seemed like hours on the floor fiddling with treadles, I'm able to weave the draft I envisioned in my head (and on Fiberworks): a 12-harness turned taquete adapted from a profile draft for 8 harnesses published by Bonnie Inouye in the Complex Weavers Journal. I fell in love with the circles and curves and have been working on it through several iterations.

Now, the dismal failure.

Right. Not the same draft, but that's not the reason it doesn't look like turned taqueté. The treadling was all wrong (that accounts for the hours under the loom) AND I forgot to check for floats. The pattern is all floats. Although I do acknowledge that it might be interesting if you wove it as an eyelash fabric (cutting the floats so that they became like "eyelashes" on top of the fabric).

Now, for those of you who are better math-heads than I am, this all might seem terribly obvious. For me, I didn't get it until I wove it. And then I got it pretty quickly, as you can see, because I wove about an inch before I cut it off. Stewed about it for quite a while and wondered what the heck was wrong.

Went back to the drawing board -- Fiberworks, that is -- and succeeded in creating a network draft with parallel threading for 12 harnesses based on the profile draft mentioned above. I used two different painted warps of 20/2 silk and combined them, threading them A-B-A-B for the parallel threading. The weft is 60/2 silk in purple from Webs. Snatching success from the jaws of failure!

This is only a sample, aiming for a fabric I would like to weave for a jacket.  Right now, I'm playing with treadlings. And getting the threading right, of course. A careful observer might notice three threading errors in this piece -- but I won't tell you where they are ;o) Suffice it to say that I broke down and bought some repair heddles, because I'm tired of making them out of string. I find that turned taqueté is a challenge to thread, particularly with parallel threading, because it has no regular blocks. It's all over the place and, if your attention lapses for only a second or two, you have to deal with it when you're weaving.

Here's one more view of the sample, with a different treadling and an off-white weft. I think it looks washed out, but it always pays to experiment. You never know!

A post-script: tying up 14 treadles for 12 harnesses is enough to convince me I need to purchase a computer dobby loom....

Collapse Techniques: Vertical Pleats with S Twist Wool and Linen Singles

I admire so many weavers, near and far, that I can't begin to list them all. But in the area of weaving dimensional fabrcis, it's a short list -- perhaps because there aren't too many who work solely with this technique.

My collapse-cloth honor roll, in no particular order: Liz Williamson of Australia, Ann Richards of Great Britain, Lotte Dalgaard of Denmark, and the late Anne Field of New Zealand. Richards, Field, and Dalgaard have all written books on the subject, and I just finished a project from Dalgaard's book, "Magical Materials to Weave: Blending Traditional and Innovative Yarns."

The beauty of these techniques is that, to paraphrase Yogi Berra, "It ain't over till it's washed." Here's a video I just made, looking at a sample woven from Dalgaard's book, both before and after washing.

And I want to make one more plug for my upcoming course, taking place the weekend of March 13-15 at the Weaving and Fiber Arts Center. To find out more, click here. Ready, set, collapse!

Coming in March: 3-Day Collapse Techniques Workshop at the Weaving and Fiber Arts Center

Above: scarf woven in cotton and wool using differential-shrinkage techniques,

deflected double-weave sample after cloque shrinkage,

pleated scarf woven in twill blocks with overtwist weft

There's still time to register for my three-day workshop on collapse weave, March 13-15 at the Weaving and Fiber Arts Center in East Rochester. We'll be weaving samples on our own looms, in a round-robin setup, so that everyone will go home with fabric in number of collapse techniques. Topics will include differential shrinkage and cloqué, deflected double weave, weaving with S and Z twist yarns, weaving with crepe and overtwist yarns, weaving with stainless-steel-blend and other specialty yarns, and using weave structures to achieve a collapse fabric.

You can register on the Weaving Center website, available here. 

Needed: One More Student for 'Shibori Basics: Itajime, Arashi, and Kumo Techniques'

Arashi shibori pattern, indigo dyed on cotton muslin

If you want to learn more about shibori-resist techniques using cotton and indigo dye, I'll be offering a one-day workshop very soon on this ancient art form.

On Friday, February 6, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Weaving and Fiber Arts Center in East Rochester, we'll look at the fundamentals of itajime (shape-resist), arashi (pole-wrapping) and kumo (pleat and bind) shibori with indigo on cotton fabrics. You'll leave with lots of samples and instructions on how to shape, wrap, and fold your way to beautiful patterns in blue on white cotton fabric, along with basic recipes for dyeing with indigo.

For more on this class and others, visit the Weaving and Fiber Arts Center. You may register online or contact me at dkovn@hotmail.com for more information.

Echo and Jin: Optimizing Color with Two Painted Warps

The headline is a mouthful, but the photo above says it better. It's an Echo pattern on eight harnesses, designed by Bonnie Inouye and published in the January/February 2008 issue of Handwoven magazine ("Two Patterns for Two Scarves," available by clicking here.)

I wove this sample using 17/2 silk noil for the warps (two separate warps painted in two different color palettes using Pro MX Fiber Reactive Dyes) and 20/2 pearl cotton in navy for the weft. The warp is threaded on opposites, allowing for two different colors to play with (or against, depending on your eye) each other in the pattern. The treadling too provides for wonderful curves and waves in the design.

The beauty part of this Echo draft is that you can also weave Jin by adding tabby. This is the second pattern that Bonnie refers to in the title of her article. Here is the same threading, with tabby, woven as Jin.

Yes! It looks longer, of course, because you've added tabby. But it's equally lovely, in my opinion, and the color shifts are just as interesting, thanks to the painted warp -- warps, really, because (at the risk of repeating myself) you're using two different painted warps together.

(A brief promotional bit here. I'm teaching the technique in July at the MAFA Conference at Millersville University in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Providing the course fills, that is. The name of the course: "Paint 2, Beam 1," and the aim is to create an ever-changing color palette for your warp, maximizing visual interest using a range of weaving structures.)

In the Handwoven piece, Bonnie has offered a different tieup and treadling for the Jin, which looks like this.

The drape of this fabric is wonderful, by the way. I wouldn't use it for a scarf, by any means, but it would certainly work for a jacket or coat. One caveat: silk noil in the warp is a bit tricky, as it tends to fray and break easily. The two-ply yarn offered me some surprises, to say the least, but the way it took the dye -- simply gorgeous! Silk never fails to please.

New Warps, New Camera Lens, New Year!

To paraphrase the old cliche: I don't know much about photography, but I know what I like. And I really like my new "Nifty Fifty" lens that my children gave me for Christmas.

All I know about photography, other than a class I took back in the day, is that a digital SLR takes the best photos because it has the most powerful sensor. That and something I learned from Rachel Biel of Rayela Art, founder of TAFA, the Textile and Fiber Art List. When I joined TAFA, she looked at my Etsy page and made a valuable comment: While my photos were good, they could be even better if they had a shallower depth of field. This would highlight the garment and make the background all out of focus, both literally and figuratively.

How to do this? I had no idea, as I had learned about photography back when you manually set your own F stops and shutter speed. On the new digital cameras, I hadn't a clue. So I asked my son, a professional filmmaker and videographer (visit Jake Kovnat at Sons and Daughters in Toronto by clicking here). He told me that all I needed was a "Nifty Fifty" lens, which meant a 50mm lens that you could set at a 1.8 F stop. (Don't ask me; that's all I know.)

So now I'm good to go! Oh yes, about those two warps: They're silk noil, I think a 17/2 weight, that I dyed using WashFast Acid Dyes. The colors are what I call "Chagall," meaning that they derive from one of his wonderful paintings set at midnight with lovers flying through the sky.

The warps are ready to beam for a sample for my upcoming MAFA class, "Paint 2, Beam 1," looking at how to achieve an ever-changing color palette in your weaving by painting two individual warps and beaming and weaving them together as one. (For more on the Mid-Atlantic Fiber Association and its July 2015 conference, click here.)

Here's an example of what you can do with "Paint 2."

Updates to come, as I beam and weave my Chagall warps....

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...."