Dyed scarves, cotton & silk

Time gets away from me. I thought I’d show you the finished ombre-dyed scarves on the 2nd or 3rd, and here it is the 7th. No matter; it’s not like you were hanging by a thread (pun intended) waiting.

So even after ‘curing’ on the heating pad overnight, both the blue and the red scarf took LOTS of rinsing for the water to come clean. Online research tells me that RIT and similar dyes are not as colorfast as the more serious dyes that I use in the classes. Hope they wear well. Here’s the blue one.

I’m happy with it. The colors are fine, the ombre worked, and the undulating twill is stable. (I’ll have to remember this draft for future undulations.)

And the red scarf.

I’m not as happy with this one for two reasons. First there’s not as much difference between the lightest part and the darkest part as I’d like. Guess even my quick first dip was too long. Second – totally my fault and I should have known better. When I re- threaded for the huck lace, I again sett the threads at 10 EPI, same as for the undulating twill. As I started weaving I had to beat hard to get the look I wanted. I should have unwoven and rethreaded the reed at 9 or even 8 EPI, and thought about it, but I didn’t feel like it. 

So the lace is really only textural, not lace-like. That’d be okay, but scarf is much stiffer than I’d like as a result o too-close threads. Sigh. Why didn’t I listen to myself?!

Anyway, at the June show I sold 2 of the 3 handpainted silk in the gold/orange/red colorway. I had another warp in a similar colorway and wanted to weave it to bring to my show this weekend, if I could. (Yes, Virginia, I am obsessive-compulsive.)

So I beamed the warp and threaded for twill blocks. I wove the first scarf with a burgundy silk-cashmere blend.

I wasn’t as happy with the threading as I might have been, and it made getting good selvedges difficult, so I rethreaded. I liked this threading much better, and the weaving moved along well. I did the first scarf, which is by far my favorite so you’ll see it last and then struggled to find a weft I liked for the last. I ended up with a sort of smoky-slatey blue. (Color isn’t as bright as it looks i the photo.) It reminds me of a sunset with storm clouds moving in.

This last scarf – I just LOVE it! I am rarely called to name my woven pieces, but this one will get a name – summer sorbet. Woven with a medium orange weft, it brings out all of the hand painted colors beautifully. Wish I’d had enough of it to do more.

I’ll be really surprised if this scarf doesn’t sell this weekend. Now I’m off to pick up the rental van.
July 7th, 2016 | 

Trying dyeing

WARNING: A long post with lots of photos. Leave now while you’ve got the chance.

I need to start by showing you two wildflowers/weeds near my house. I’m hoping someone can identify at least one of them for me. The first is really sweet and small. You can see a portion of my foot in the photo for scale. The little flower is a nice orange. don’t recall ever seeing this plant before. I’m thinking it’s a garden escapee?

Then there’s the big weed that’s taken over the side yard of an abandoned house near me. When it was small I thought it was milkweed. It’s clearly not. I feel like I should know this one, and that it’s bad, but I can’t place it. I should probably get out my wildflower book. The stalks are quite red, and probably 3′ tall.

So other than looking at weeds/wildflowers, what else have I been doing? Well, at the show last weekend it was clear to me tha I should weave more bookmarks. I decided I wanted to do some monk’s belt, a weave structure I think I’ve only previously done in classes. I thought I’d wound a warp long enough to make 16 bookmarks, but I only got 13 out of it. That’s ok.

Then I really wanted to try doing some ombre dyeing with Rit dyes at home. I had picked up 3 cones of a really nice pima cotto at a local resale store. It’s quite thick, 790 ypp, very soft, and I figured it would weave up quickly and take dye well, plus I wasn’ out much money if it didn’t work. So I wound a warp for two scarves, and wove the first one with an undulating twill.

After that, remembering my recent undulating twill disaster (different draft), I re-threaded for huck lace, but forgot to take a photo on the loom. I got both scarves woven, then spent a bunch of time online looking at websites and blogs about ombre dyeing. I have to say, there was quite a bit of inconsistency in process and time needed, so I figured I’d have to go with my gut. I got the scarves washed and rinsed, then brought the needed tools outside.

I mixed up a bottle of Rit dye with a cup of salt in about a gallon of water – maybe a little more.

Then I started dipping. Since the yarn was unbleached and quite creamy colored, I didn’t think it would look good with the center having no dye at all, so dipped the entire scarf quickly.

Then I proceeded to lower and raise the scarf (note that it’s folded in half here), since I didn’t want distinct color lines. I dipped

the middle section about 30 times. I wanted the bottom quite dark, and dipped it about 120 times. Then I hung it on my arbor (another story for another time). I went in the house to get the second scarf and the next bottle of dye. While I was gone the wind kicked up and blew the scarf against my neighbor’s fence.

That wasn’t a big deal, but the splatters on my neighbor’s garage were.

I ran back into the house and got paper towels and dish soap. Should have had those tools outside with me to begin with. I moved the scarf to the front of the arbor and started on the next scarf, mixing up a batch of red dye.

It was too red for me, so I mixed in a bunch of the blue.

I wish the store had had more than 5 colors for me to choose from – these 2, plus black, brown, and dark green. Anyway, I followed the same process with the red dye. Here are both scarves hanging and dripping from the arbor.

You’d think I would have learned from the experience with my neighbor’s garage, and taken more care when I dumped out the blue dye in the weeds behind my own garage, but no.

There was so much of it that it didn’t really wipe off. I decided since it’s behind the garage I didn’t really care. So I headed to th other side of the yard and started the clean up. Fewer tools needed.

Interestingly, the red dye really stained the dishpan and the blue washed out almost completely. I would have expected the opposite, since in my experience red dye runs A LOT.

While the scarves were hanging outside dripping, I picked a mess of peas, went inside and shelled, steamed, quick-chilled, and froze a bag of them.

After a while I went back outside and brought in the scarves. I laid out a long piece of plastic wrap on the kitchen floor and laid scarf on it.

I covered it with another layer of plastic and rolled it up. Then I did the same thing with the red scarf.

After they were all rolled up I put them on my heating pad, set on low, where it will sit overnight, hopefully setting that dye.

Tomorrow I’ll rinse the scarves and press them. I won’t know until then how well it worked. I’m actually hoping that some of the dye rinses out since both scarves are a bit darker than I had in mind.

I’ll share the results with you!

July 1st, 2016 | 

MonkeyBoots IronMan Jim

I’m going to start this post with the good news. My grandson had told his mom on several occasions that he wished he had a sock monkey. As it so happened, I had 1 pair of sock monkey socks in my craft trunk so made it for him. For the record, I don’t like making sock monkeys. The sock fabric is too stretchy to be fun to work with, and heaven help you if you need to take a seam out. That being said, Jack thought he was the nuts (a little monkey humor there). It was all I could do to keep Jack away from the monkey while I was sewing and then while we waited for the little boy to come and get him.

Well, the almost-five-year-old boy LOVED the monkey! Way more than I could have hoped for. So much that he gave him 3 names, just like the boy has 3 names. The monkey’s name is MonkeyBoots IronMan Jim. Quite the monkier for a little simian, don’t you think? I liked the humor in making this monkey a vest with another monkey (Julius Junior) on it.

On to other sewing adventures....
I took both my courage and my scissors in hand and cut out the pattern pieces for my pants.

I spent several hours yesterday sewing. Lessons learned or remembered quickly:

The handwoven definitely frays more than commercial fabric, so needed some type of seam treatment.
French seams are tedious and time consuming, not something I was willing to do on these pants.
Zigzag stitching was ok, but looked pretty ugly.
Overlock stitch looked better than zigzag, but was better still when I sewed both raw edges together rather than doing them individually.

I will not sew for money. Just like I won’t knit for money. I’ll do it as gifts or for myself, but that’s all. It’s not one of my favorite activities and I’m not interested in investing the kind of time and attention it needs to have a professional-looking finished product inside & out. Don’t think I could get my money back on that kind of time commitment, either.

Ok, so this morning I sewed on the waistband, made the ties, and then could try the pants on for the first time. Lessons learned the hard way:

Although I’ve never done it and doubt that I’ll start now, it makes a lot of sense to make the pattern out of muslin (or similar) first so you have an idea of fit and can make adjustments as needed.
Before getting this far, stop and think. Do I own anything similar I can lay on the bed so I can compare shapes and sizes? Don’t believe either the measurements or the pictures on the pattern.

When I sewed that vest from my handwoven fabric I made a size medium. It’s really too small. You can fudge a bit with a vest, but I sure didn’t want to make that mistake again with the pants. Plus my actual body measurements were what the pattern called large, so I made the pants large. Big mistake.

They are SO big that it’s way too much fabric bunched up at my waist, and it sticks out very unattractively in both front and back Only at this point did I realize I had been wearing a pair of drawstring waist cotton shorts, so I laid them on the bed to compare sizes.

Those pants are A LOT bigger.
So I went back to the pattern and looked at the photo on the front again.

I realize that model’s probably an extra small, but there’s NO WAY that her pants fit the way mine are cut. Even if I’d made a medium instead of the large, the legs of my pants are WAY wider than hers, and the drawstring is gathered only slightly at her waist, too. False advertising!

Now I know I could remove the waistband, take out the side seam pockets, re-cut the fabric, and re-sew. However I also know that taking out the waistband and the pockets will cause lots of fraying. While I have enough fabric to cut a whole new waistband, that’s not true for the pockets, and in reality, even it it were true, I know myself well enough to know I wouldn’t do it, and even if I did, I’d end up hating the pants for what they put me through and never wearing them anyway.

So I pinned in some pleats on one side. Would I like that better?

It’s better, but is it enough better to make them wearable? Here’s a view of the side without the pinned in pleats.

I do know this...I’m not going to make a decision and implement it in time to wear these pants for the show I’ve got this weekend. I’m also not going to blindly use the top pattern for my planned top; I may not use it at all.

I’m fed up. I’m tired from lack of sleep. I’m going to put away the sewing machine, put everything else in a bag or bin, and watc some mindless TV for a while.

June 22nd, 2016 | 

What was I thinking?

 Weaving was progressing smoothly and rather rapidly. I finished 1/3 of the warp on the first day, and on the next I was past 115′′ All of a sudden, the light bulb went off in my head. I couldn’t make pants out of the fabric I was weaving! It was far too loose for this pants!

So I started weaving anew, now packing it much more densely. You can see from the photo that after that decision I struggled to make the weave consistent...some areas are more closely woven than others. This got better as I went along, but was a challenge throughout.

The good news is that I can most likely use the more loosely-woven fabric to make a top. The pattern I bought for the pants als has a simple top pattern.

The bad news is that I’ll have to wind another warp to make up the length I need. Sigh. The good news is that I have enough yarn to do so.

June 16th, 2016 | 

Unintended design elements

I finished that warp of 3 scarves shown recently on the loom. I used an undyed ring-spun bamboo warp and 3 colors for weft. Above is my favorite, an olive tencel.

I had wanted to keep the scarves all bamboo, but don’t have much in my stash (and am not buying more yarns, remember?), so first tried with a bit of hand painted bamboo left over from a project.

IMHO the variation in the weft detracts from the lace pattern.

It’s unusual that I re-thread the loom in the middle of a run of three scarves, but I decided to here. The threading and treadling were things I had adapted from a draft in Strickler’s 8-Shaft Patterns book (#625). I was proud of myself for figuring out to to change the draft to a skeleton tie up, since Strickler showed it with 12 treadles and I only have 10. With a skeleton tie up you have to step on two (or more) treadles at once for each pick. Anyway, after 2 of these lace diamonds I wanted to thread and treadle for the original, which was more triangles or steps of light and dark lace. For this one I chose a sienna tencel weft.

This scarf has some unintended ‘design elements.’ I saw the first when I was already half way through the weaving. I had left out a 6-unit treadling sequence! Here’s a close up.

The red arrow shows how I’d been doing it wrong, having a maximum of 4 units of white lace showing. The black arrow shows how I should have been treadling, working up to 5 units of white lace showing.

Once I discovered my error I thought about it for a while. No way was I going to unweave almost 40′′, and I didn’t have enough length on the loom to simply start again. I decided that I didn’t think it would impact on the fabric’s stability, and since I had been entirely consistent, I’d keep weaving it ‘wrong.’

The second unintended ‘design element’ was that the sienna tencel bled into the bamboo fringe a bit. I’m calling it an ombre effect.

Marlene asked me how I threaded the loom for my green & white scarf, so I’m providing photos of the two different threadings here. If anyone would like a wif file (for weaving software), let me know and I’ll email you directly.

On the rodent front, this morning I poured about a pint of white vinegar down the hole, with no noticeable impact. Tonight I’ll do the rest of the quart. Next I’ll probably try buying moth balls and putting them in the hole. I really don’t want to use poison, because it’s passed on to whatever prey animal(s) end up with a poisoned carcass. Trapping? Possible, but I’d sure hate to catch a neighborhood pet in a rat trap. Hav-A-Heart trap? I don’t know, but I’d have to buy/borrow one. If I believed it was bunnies, chipmunks, or even squirrels I’d just look the other way. But I can’t bring myself to do that if it’s a rat, possum, groundhog, or skunk. (I highly doubt the last as there’s no ‘perfume’ around.) Your ideas on convincing the critter to move on?

June 7th, 2016 | 

So soft and cozy

Why was rayon chenille calling to me during a warm spell in late May? There are, in fact, good reasons.

I’d purchased many cones of the luscious stuff over a year ago when it was on sale. I couldn’t do anything about it when was weaving baby wraps pretty much full time.
Almost all my yarn is stored in clear plastic bins. The colors of this chenille are so saturated, so rich, that looking at them for more than 12 months was almost torture. Now that I have time to do something with them, I just had to.

I am committed to stash busting. I’ve been doing a pretty good job of it, emptying some shelves and/or bins so that I can see what’s there and use it up. I’ve been exercising my will power not buying more to, for instance, do more rep weave with that filler I did buy recently, even though I was really tempted.
Although I do have some rayon chenille shawls in my stash, they’ve been here for a while and aren’t calling to either me or my customers. I have a few shows in the offing where I think I can sell shawls, even though it’ll be summer, if they’re stunningly beautiful. At least that’s what I’m hoping.

So I warped for three shawls and wove them all. Each a bit different, as is my custom. I’d love to do three more, but I’m trying something else now. More on these later....

Meanwhile, I felt better about those braided twill scarves when I realized that I dyed them in the first class, when I didn’t really know what I was doing in terms of color choices or length of the colors. I’m hoping they appeal to someone, although they are not my best work.

I’ve also been enjoying my garden. My veggies now include potatoes (less than 1/3 sprouted), peas (first flowers now appearing), kale (recently thinned well), carrots (thinned yesterday, but poorly), yellow beans and green beans (one of which the bunnies nipped already), tomatoes & peppers, yellow straightneck squash, sugar cube melon, and latest planting – Brussels sprouts! Never grew many of these veggies before, so am excited to see how they do this year.

Gave Jack a short haircut, which I think he really likes, am figuring out how to keep him and my house cool without using the air conditioning, loving doing laundry and hanging it on the line, watching/playing with my grandkids, and generally living the good life. And you???

June 3rd, 2016 | 

Going public

 Does the scarf in that spread look familiar? It’s my cityscape scarf, published in the new Handwoven magazine. This article wa 11 months in the making, from me watching a webinar on how to submit to the magazine, to having the scarf accepted as a concept, to having it published. In between, the USPS lost the scarf in the mail for a month, making me crazy. But it all worked out in the end. If you can’t bear not reading it, here’s a PDF of the article.

I also just got notice of my acceptance in this year’s Clothesline Festival. Now that I live in Rochester I wanted to get into this well-respected show, so was holding my breath that I’d be accepted. I think this will be a predominantly new audience for me. You can get details on this and the other shows I’ll be doing this year on my website.

A few weeks ago I showed you a braided twill scarf on the loom. It took a while for me to get them fringed, wet finished, presse and photographed, but here you go.

I thought I’d done a better job of color changes on this warp...they’re still too long. And that pink is garish. Sigh.

Anyway, from left to right the weft colors are red-purple, medium blue, and forest green. The blue is by far my favorite of the three. The close ups of these scarves, showing the front and back of each, are pretty dramatic.

I also finished the baby blankets. Although I’ve previously done a polyester satin binding because I know babies like that smooth & silky feel, I’ve been told by others that it can tend to reduce the perceived value of a handwoven baby blanket. So this time I used a cotton weft for a rolled hem, putting a ‘tag’ made of that binding material at each corner for baby’s fingers to grab and rub.

Closing with color....here are the appetizers I made for my daughter’s Memorial Day party. Green & red peppers topped with a ‘stuffing’ of neufchatel cheese, lemon juice & lemon zest, black pepper, & almond meal, finished with toasted slivered almonds.

May 30th, 2016 |