More Collapse-Fabric Samples: This Time, Double Weave with 30/2 Silk and 30/1 S and Z Twist Wool

To me, that looks like happy cloth: All crinkled and intricate with blocks in black that remind me of fish swimming upstream.

So often, collapse fabrics mimic nature, with its organic forms and energy. Nothing flat or two dimensional about it, which is why I love it.

The samples I'm sharing in this blog post hark back to a workshop I took in London with Ann Richards, author of Weaving Textiles That Shape Themselves. That workshop was in 2014 and it continues to inspire me.

One of the drafts Ann shared with us was a double-weave structure on 8 shafts using a warp of 30/2 silk and 30/1 Z twist or S twist wool -- your choice -- to create alternating layers of silk and wool. The weft was the same -- and you could again choose either 30/1 S twist or 30/1 Z twist wool for the second layer. (If you chose the same twist for both warp and weft, you would get a more subtle collapse effect after washing. If you used yarns with twist in opposite directions for warp and weft, you would get a greater collapse effect. I used 30/1 Z twist in the warp and 30/1 S twist in the weft.)

Here's Ann's original structure.

Here are my samples.

Front before washing

Back before washing

Front after washing

Back after washing

Pretty cool, huh? As always, I stand in awe of the laser-sharp focus that Ann brings to her designing. I tried my hand at modifying the tie-up and treadling, so see if there were some new forms I could create from this. First I decided to weave linear stripes.

Here's the drawdown, same threading.

And here are my results. In order of appearance: front and back before washing and front and back after washing.

The vertical pleats on the front are crisp, which I like very much -- but the back also has some visual appeal. There's potential here, perhaps to develop a draft that turns the stripes into boxes. More playing with Fiberworks, which I don't mind at all.

(As I write this, I realize that this post is mostly photos. But that's what we do, right? Create visual art that is often hard to describe verbally, although we do the best we can.)

So here's the last drawdown, this time with interrupted lines of black on the front. The finished fabric can be seen in the image I started with in this blog post.

And here's the fabric, again showing front and back before washing and after washing, in that order.

So often for me, weaving samples prompts as many questions as it answers. What can I do next? What kind of garment would this make? Would it work with painted warps? How can I alter this structure to make it appealing in a new way? I never considered myself to be a weaver who follows the code of "Sample, sample, sample" -- but I'm beginning to see the benefits of doing so.

And so, dear reader, beam on! And thanks for visiting.

Bhutanese Textiles with Wendy Garrity -- at the New Weaving and Fiber Arts Center!

A detail of Bhutanese kushutara weaving

Luckily, for those of us who love textiles, we can travel the world without leaving our homes. Last week at the new Weaving and Fiber Arts Center (more on that later), Australian Wendy Garrity took us to Bhutan. 

Her presentation focused on the gorgeous fabrics known as kushutara, woven on backstrap looms by Bhutanese women in their homes. Pictured above: Garrity at the start of her presentation  -- before we remembered to turn the lights out! Her blog is called "Textile Trails."

Kushutara (supplementary weft brocades, also spelled kushuthara and kishutara) resemble embroidery but are hand woven -- often on looms that are built into the walls of the weaver's home. They have a discontinuous weft, as you see in the details below (front and back of the same fabric, respectively).

And they are gorgeous! Weavers use continuous weft-pattern designs called sapma and discontinuous weft-pattern designs called tingma. Garrity explains tingma this way: "The discontinuous supplementary weft patterning consists of sapma (inlay) and thrima (twining)." These techniques are all woven in brilliantly-colored silk in seemingly random color palettes. The results are what Garrity refers to as "eye candy."

So here, for your viewing pleasure, is some of the eye candy she brought along to show us.

As so often with textiles, photos don't do justice to the real pieces. The work in this last photo, for instance, has an eloquence and complexity that is hard to convey secondhand -- mainly because the full yardage in all its glory has a tremendous variety of colors and patterns. For this reason, Garrity urged us to view all of her fabrics from a distance as well as up close.

And I have yet to mention the new, larger home for the Weaving and Fiber Arts Center. What an expansive, bright, loom-filled site! Here are a few photos, to give you an idea.

The new location, just around the corner from the old one

Looms to the left of you... 

Looms to the right... 

And table looms at just the right height!

This fall, at the new location, I will be teaching beginning weaving and advanced beginning weaving (kind of a contradiction in terms, but you get the idea) as well as a natural-dyeing workshop. For more information, you can check out the courses as soon as the new listings are posted, which should be by mid-August.

Thanks for reading! 

Using a Warping Reel: a Short Video

If you're a weaver, you know that summer is conference season. (Well, I guess autumn is also conference season, and then again, if you live in the southern hemisphere, winter is summer up north, so winter is also conference season.... But I digress.)

Anyhow, I'm getting ready to teach at MAFA (MidAtlantic Fiber Association) in Pennsylvania and  at the Hartford Artisans Weaving Center in Connecticut. And I'm winding warps for both workshops. LOTS of warps. For MAFA, I wound ten seven-yard warps and for Hartford, I'm working on 18 eight-yard warps. I am not sure I will ever set up another workshop where I wind so many darned warps ahead of time.

So, what to do? My warping board is big enough, certainly, but it requires a lot of moving back and forth and up and down. Which is inefficient and slow.

The answer for me was a warping reel. I can stand in one place and, moving slightly, wind an eight-yard warp in less time than it takes on a warping board. While I'm not one who aims to weave as efficiently as possible (if I wanted efficiency, I probably wouldn't have become a weaver in the first place), I do appreciate saving time on production work.

I borrowed a warping reel from my friend Leslie Mendelson and it helps a lot. (Thank you, Leslie!) Which is why I made this video, in hopes that someone else could benefit from a demonstration. Thanks to my husband, Larry, for directing, production, and financing ;o)

Still More Collapse Cloth -- This Time on 8 Shafts

This summer, for me, will be all about collapse fabrics: I'm teaching a workshop at MAFA and a workshop at the Hartford Artisans Weaving Center, plus I will give a lecture on the topic to the New York Guild of Handweavers.

To prepare, I have been weaving up lots of samples and learning A LOT from the results. (Re-learning a lot, too -- for example, that sett can make the difference between a good fabric and a wonderful fabric. We all know this, but we need to be reminded, particularly if a project should be re-sleyed at a different sett and we get -- well, lazy....)

Anyhow, the samples I've blogged about to date have all been on 4 shafts, because that's the focus of my first workshop at MAFA. In Hartford, we'll be working on both 4 and 8 shafts, so now I've begun sampling on 8. Here are some photos. 

I call these "Before" and "After" shots. The photo above is a "Before" shot of fabric just off the loom. I got the draft from a workshop I took a few years ago in London with Ann Richards, author of Weaving Textiles that Shape Themselves. The warp in this case uses both wool/stainless-steel yarn (the taupe-colored warp, available from Lion Brand and from Habu) and 16/2 bamboo (in red and orange). The weft is 72/2 linen (to give the fabric stiffness) alternating with the wool/stainless yarn.

Here is the "After" photo:

In this case, you have two elements that make this a dimensional fabric: structure and energized yarns. The structure is plain weave with floats alternating weft-wise and warp-wise, so that the floats make room for the fabric to pleat in and out. The wool/stainless draws in and twists when washed, which encourages the pleats to form. Finally, the stability of the linen weft adds crispness to the fabric. Pretty clever, huh? All thanks to Ann, who approaches her art with the mind of a scientist.

Another fabric, this one an 8-shaft double weave, pictured in its "Before" state, showing both front and back views:

The red sections are 18/2 superfine merino from JaggerSpun, which fulls beautifully when hand-washed. The black is 24/2 superlamb from JaggerSpun, which resists fulling because it's a superwash wool. Here's what it looks like, front and back, after hand washing in warm water and agitating with dishwashing soap:

To be honest, the black squares on the front of the fabric don't "pop" the way I had hoped. I was looking for a real dimensional "pouf" in the cloth -- but still I think it works.

Here's another structure from the same warp, before washing, front and back, same yarns.

And after washing:

This sample had a lot more texture, thanks mostly to the floats on the back. It's very thick, suitable for a warm jacket or coat.

If you're interested in any drafts, let me know. It's great add texture to your fabric! And here's one parting shot, of another sample just completed, using the same warp and weft as the first sample in this post but with a different treadling. (This is the sample that you see in the close-up photo that begins this post.)

Happy shape-shifting, y'all!

More Collapse-Cloth Samples on 4 Shafts

LOTS more! I have been preparing more than a dozen samples for a workshop I'm teaching this summer at the MAFA Conference at Millersville University in Pennsylvania: "Collapse Fabrics on 4 Shafts." And, without giving away the drafts and all the details, I'd like to share some photos and descriptions of the results.

Pictured above: a 2-block weave on a warp of 60/2 silk, using a weft of 60/2 silk alternating with 18/2 JaggerSpun Superfine Merino. Here's what the sample looked like before washing, just off the loom:

Pretty different, right? That's the beauty of weaving dimensional fabric: What is geometric and two-dimensional on the loom becomes a fabric that is far more organic and three-dimensional after finishing. All it takes is a little bit of warm water, soap, and agitation. In the case of this sample, the wool will full and shrink, drawing the silk in width-wise. The geometric squares of orange, red, and dark blue in the warp become concave ovals. Very interesting and very forgiving for weavers like me who aren't always exact about selvages, picks per inch, even treadlings (but don't tell anyone).

A few more before and after photos below.

18/2 JaggerSpun Superfine Merino warp and weft. Above is the front of the piece before washing, and below is the back.

 And here's what the sample looks like after washing, front and back.

 Fun, I think! Much more quirky and natural-looking.

Above, a pretty ho-hum piece of fabric woven in plain weave -- red, gold, and lavender 16/2 bamboo in warp and weft -- with a supplemental-weft pattern using embroidery cotton in natural. I pulled the embroidery cotton tight to create a woven-shibori resist. (Looks like some kind of sea creature to me.)

Wash and scrub and agitate, check to make sure everything is working, repeat -- then take out all the embroidery cotton and...

Here's a close-up:

So for me, the weaving advice of "sample, sample, sample" has helped immensely -- to learn and to share with others who love this technique. After MAFA, I will be teaching how to weave dimensional fabrics on 4 and 8 harnesses at the Hartford Artisans Weaving Center in Hartford, CT. And in September I will lecture on the subject at the New York Guild of Handweavers. More sampling to come!