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I had a question the other day about how to get a dark color with indigo. The answer is many dips, But words are not nearly as effective as a picture, sweetgeorgia posted a picture of 10 dips . Scroll down to the 2nd picture and you can see the progression from 1 dip (lt. blue) to 10. Looks to me like some are dry and some are wet and wet makes cloth look darker, even so you get the idea. Indigo is not for the one-shot-mamas.
We labeled, wrote up instruction and packed two outfits for the Artwear in Motion Runway Show. In the hands of Fed Ex now.
The first outfit was the Sting Ray one that you have heard endlessly about. The second was one called Sea Shell, to keep with a theme. The description I sent with it, follows:
This outfit consists of three pieces a dress, a belt and a bolero jacket. The dress and bolero are made from a silk organza with extra chunks of organza sewn to it, it was then dyed and then pole wrapped in an arashi shibori technique; discharged and over-dyed. The pleats from this process were set. This cloth was used to make the stretchable tube strapless dress with elastic at the top and the waist. The belt in pearlized leather, which is made like a narrow corset, it will hold the dress secure. Once the size of the belt is adjusted in the back with the lacing it can be put on with the fastners in the front. The bolero goes on last and has and understructure to support and shape the sleeves. All construction techniques are couture.
I am not pleased with these photos, it could be that putting it on a size 12 dressform when it was made on an 8 is part of the problem. The colorway of the dress and bolero is called bing salsa and the leather in the belt/corset if a greeny gold.
I have made a few posts (i, ii, iii, iv) about using a black dye to get black and white shibori. You want a true, deep black and white (determined by the whitness of the cloth you are dyeing) and of course, shades of grey. What you don't want is shades of blue or pink or halos of purple--that is any color. There have been success and failure; not an easy task to get B&W.
Fiber influences your chance of success; both Neki and I have achieved it on silk. My failures have been on cotton.
The dye also effects the outcome; we had success with Lanaset Black and Dylon Ebony Black. Now Lanaset is an acid dye and acid dye families usually have a black manufactured color (not a mixture of other colored dyes) . The Lanaset one is a true black,some from other acid dye families have a cast, say purple for example. So the Lanaset one is special. There are probably other true black acid dyes that I don't know, there are a lot of acid dyes. Now fiber reactive dyes, commonly used for cotton, do not usually have a black manufactured color and the black is mixed from navy, gold and red. The mixed black then separates during shibori, rather like chomotography, leading to colored halos. The mixed fiber reactive black might be beautiful in an immersion dyebath, or in direct application but they give us trouble in shibori. But there tend to be several mixed blacks and each may be designed for a specfic application process; the pad-batch black might be different than a immersion bath black. Fiber reactive dyes also work on silk (standard processing) and so you might find a silk black and a cotton black (here there are 8 blacks/greys for the old fiber reactive dyes, Procion MX).
While I was out buying notions to finish up the outfits for Artwear in Motion I saw some Dylon dye, black that had worked so well for Neki. So I am now the proud owner of 1.75 oz. of #12 black. From the package I learned it contains trisodium phosphate and reactive black 5. I suspect that this means it contains one dye that is black, not a muixture of dyes. I can't wait to try it on cotton!
From a comment about the Artwear Fashion Week
How do you find out about events like this? We don't have anything like it in the UK, unfortunately.
Well let's just share some info and remedy the situtation.
First you get the prospectus and then submit slides/digital images for jurying in a timely fashion and then ship the garments. None of the ones I submit to have a restriction on where you live, so these are open to you in Australia, UK, Spain, Venezuela.... The hardest part may be getting the images in time for the jurying. We actually made the Copper Tails outfit for the 2005 runway show at the Surface Design Conference. The slides were due in Feb. and we were just finishing the outfit so we took some pictures with my digital camera (the same one I use to take pictures for the blog) and a young woman we were using as a fit model. I cropped them the best I could and sent off this:
This outfit got rejected! We did manage to convince them to show the Copper Tails but not Las Ondas Negras (the one that is featured on the ArtWear Fashion Week page). Once we got proessional shots of the outfit such as this
the outfit has not been rejected and in fact won this prize.
So some upcoming runway shows you can apply for are (all have entry forms on the website):
Surface Design Assocaition Conference
apply in Feb. 2007
Show June 2007, Kansas City MO
WOW
apply in the spring (nothern hemishere)
show Sept. 2007 in New Zealand
ArtWear Fashion Week
apply summer 2007
show Sept. 2007 in Ft. Collins CO
Artwear in Motion
apply next June and show in October 2007. This show is unique in that you can jury with any slides then make new outfit for the show.
The weaver's conferences such as Convergence and Midwest also usually have runway shows.
I actually participated in one in the UK, at the ISS, International Shibori Symposium, held in Harrogate in Nov. 2002.
Does anyone one else have any juried runway shows to add to the list?
More:
VOLTAGE: FASHION AMPLIFIED – CALL FOR ENTRY
The Midwest's premier rock and fashion show. Through its annual events, Voltage seeks to foster collaboration, engender community and unite music and fashion while providing a national forum for local talent.
Application Deadline: September 29, 2006.
Application Fee: $25, make checks payable to Ruby 3
Application Requirements: Photos of previous work and line proposal for Voltage 2007 should be on disc in jpeg format. Images must be clearly titled and slideshow ready for panel review. Completed application must be included.
Send to:
Voltage: Fashion Amplified
c/o Anna Lee
628 4th Street NE #2
Minneapolis, MN 55413
We sent 3 garments to this event in Ft. Collins CO ( sending them out ). Last night I got this email
Hello Karren & Grace,ArtWear Fashion Week was a great success! We had a sold out Preview
Event as well as great participation throughout our week of activities.
As part of ArtWear Fashion Week, five awards were given and we are
pleased to inform you that your garment, " Copper Tails" is the
recipient of the top award - FIBERARTS MAGAZINE AWARD at this
year's ARTWEAR FASHION WEEK event.
Thank you for participating this year and we hope you
will show with us again in 2008.
Wow!
There are rewards now and then.
Here is a purse made from shibori. It looks to me like mokume (parallel lines of hand stitching gathered very tightly, see page 86 & following in my book, SHIBORI;creating color and texture on silk) and she says that it is indigo. Looks purple on my screen.
The other piece is green and she got the name almost right-- I think she meant discharge not disperse (disperse dyes are used on polyester and add color).
Most shibori is used to create patterns like these . Only silk can hold the texture.
The Wool Gathering happens each year at Young Jersey Dairy about a mile north of Yellow Springs. It is one of my favorite events; fall weather, lots of friends from my weaving days. I saw some of teammates from our Sheep to Shawl team ((at the state fair, 4 people and a sheep have two hours to make a shawl).
But the times change and it sure seems to me that the knitters are taking over the fiber world. This is how they do it.
Someone was asking me the color of naturally colored cotton, also refered to as Foxfiber for Sally Fox,( a real pioneer, see some of her strugles) and my answer was that they were all pale shades of brown altho' one is called green. Here you can see for yourself:
.
But my favorite part was watching the dogs herd. Amazing! the way they keep the herd together and how exicted they are to work. These were herding ducks (easier to transport) instead of sheep. They could take them over a bridge, thru a tunnel or up a ramp into a pool... just for fun.
Neki over at A Movable Feast has been having trouble with black and shibori similar to the B&W on cotton here (part 1, part 2). She is working with silk;
Yesterday I took my "real black" dye and shiboried and dyed a piece of silk hoping to get super black on white.This will later become inserts for my red top which is in process right now.
To make a frustrating loong story short" real black" my eye. It dyed with a hideous reddish overcast. Will have to overdye with navy to try and kill the red..................Arashi means storm and we have had a lot of that recently.It was forseeable after such a hot summer......One thing I discovered was that a black MX dye that had been reported in various forums as being it didn't meet the grade, separating and haloing during immersion dyeing like crazy. Back to my trustworthy never failing Dylon black.
So now we know Lanaset black and Dylon will both work for silk shibori, giving a true black and white.
Runway shows that some one else organizes and mounts, always have surprises for the designer.
This is related to a rant of mine at the end of this entry when I was sending outfits to Ft. Collins CO for their show. I try to give detailed instructions on how to wear each out fit but it is easy to forget the simple basic things. It is always the unstated assumptions that get you into trouble.
For example this out fit:
and here is a detail of the back
This is made from silk illusion that has been pleated and burned while it is on the pole; resist burning instead of resist dyeing. Anyhow it was one of the first outfits that Grace and I made together. It has a double layer body suit in a nude stretch nylon as a foundation. You can't see anything through it nor can you see it. The pleated cloth was draped and then hand stitched with invisible thread to the foundation. This all had to be done on the mannekin because when you sewed it laying on the table and then hung it up, it hung in puckers.
Well we took it to Harrogate England for a runway show that was part of a Shibori Conference there in November 2002. When it showed up on the stage there was turquoise bra and panties underneath. No one saw the dress and it took all the king's men to keep Grace in her seat.
I sent it to New Zeland for the WOW show there and it cost me $250 for return shipping and took so long to come back that it missed a museum show it was scheduled for. The people in New Zeland forgot to fill out the customs forms. I don't know how it looked on stage, I wasn't there, no pictures.
Then last year we sent it to the Art in Motion show in Minneapolis; Retroflexion. And they made a DVD for the public TV station so I saw photos. This is is the photo of the same outfit on their site. This time there is white underwear to help focus attention on the crotch!
I forgot to mention that the model should be naked before getting dressed.
So now I make the outfits, label and write directions on how to wear them, ship, then let go.
Grace left and I'm finishing up the second garment for the Art in Motion Runway Show. We have been working on the sleeves at her studio and she has this arm form that she invented and I think patented. Anyhow I didn't know how I was going to put the sleeves together without something to drape ithem on. Luckily she had given me a pattern to make one so yesterday we made our arm form.
This is not a permanent addition to the dress form (how would you get clothes on and off?) but just pins on at the shoulder when needed.
Yesterday I sewed weights on the front and back seam at the hem of the dress, steamed the hem, sewed on the straps and positioned the hook and eye above the zipper. I think that it is done. Grace may make a hat...
Here are some snapshots of the outfit. Without proper lighting it is hard to see the details of the collar in the front and I assure you that the the dress is black, not grey, not navy-- just bad lighting not bad dyeing. The leather is shinny black and the silk matelasse is matte black.
Here is my description of the outfit:
This ensemble is composed of two pieces: a black leather jacket and a black silk dress. The starting point for the jacket was the stingray leather piece in the center back with the white pattern down the center and its shape. The shibori dyed pattern in the silk dress was developed to mimic the white patterning in the stingray leather. The pleated leather was also made by shibori techniques. The waves in the collar, peplum and the flounces of the dress were inspired by the movement of the stingray swimming gracefully through the water. The entire ensemble was made with couture construction techniques.
The only thing I would add now is that there is a lot of play with textures in the outfit. The jacket has smooth shinny leather, corregated leather and the sting ray leather has a texture like tiny seed beads embedded. The silk matelasse has a structural texture and the flounces are organza , a crisp smooth texture.
You will not be subjected to more snapshots of this outfit, you'll have to wait for professional photo shoot for more.
I received this email:
I am fascinated with your blog entries about your development of the sting ray ensemble. It is interesting to see some of your creative processes at work.(Actually it is called the DyersList, in case you go looking for it.)
I am a weaver-dyer trying to market my own work. I see that you spend much time and energy and resources on your exhibition pieces. Do you do this to increase your market visibility, and is it effective, or do you it for fun and to push yourself creatively? I have always wondered if I should be working toward exhibition pieces, but I am so overwhelmed just putting out the bread and butter pieces, I don't know how to proceed.
I have your book, which I love, and I appreciate your knowledgable posts on DyeList.
My philosophy has always been for these micro-businesses (which will never make you rich like Bill Gates) that you need to produce something that meets some unsatisfied part in your customer (I do not produce something that any one NEEDS), and it must meet some of MY needs. So this is the part that meets some of my needs.
I don't know that it has any impact on sales. It does help to create a reputation a with my collegues, who are the people who judge, jury and invite--- so it may impact the opportunities I have to sell. It allows me to do things that that are not part of my line and to stretch and grow. Collaboration allows one to see thru' new eyes and to learn new things and put things together in new ways.
You may have all the growth you can handle right now, learning how to market, produce in a cost effective manner, and satisfy some thing in your customer. Later you may need to stretch different muscles.
Let me tell you a story about trying something new. Last year I was contacted by Mike Fowler of tie-dye.com (now defunct) to be a visiting artist on the tie-dye forum. I said yes, then after I was into it I asked myself why on earth did you want to do this? While still sitting on this forum, last summer we raised a small crop of silk worms and I started posting some pictures everyday. Peoples loved it!
This is a picture from the silk raising that produced many comments. This is the reel that I made from readily available parts ( yes, it is Tinker Toys) to pull the thread from the cocoons-- you can just see the fine thread coming in from the right at the top--- in a process called reeling. Reeling produces the top quality silk threads, yarns and fabrics.
Not too many steps from posting daily on a forum to blogging.
I spent the yesterday at Grace's studio in Cinncy. The sting ray jacket is assembled, just needs the hem facings and the lining which is ready.
The sting ray leather in the center back sets the mood for the whole piece. The pleated leather is in the waist panels and cuffs. The collar does stand up.
From the from you can see the collar turning into waves down the front. The panels underneath, lower center front, to fasten took some engineering. The dress is nearly done too. Today we are hemming, attaching straps and lining. Then remove all the colored basting threads.
Grace is leaving Tue. AM for the birth of a grandchild so this and the other outfit must be finished by then.
On Thursday we started with the sting ray dress mostly sewn and finished with it in pieces. The front center front was sagging and our idea was that the under-lining was causing the problem so we took it all apart to remove the china silk under-lining and ended with the dress in pieces. On Friday I put it together again, with out the china silk and using a narrow zigzag stitch and I'm thrilled to report that it now looks good!
You can see for yourself. The rest of the dress is going together just fine. Grace was here yesterday and was showing me the difference between the shape of the dress form and a real person in the underarm area, a critical no gap zone. We've put a bone in the facing on the side and eased in the upper edge some more from the side to above the bust point.
One of the problems for these projects is fit. Since we have no idea of the model , we make the outfit and send it off with some indication of the size . They then look for a person to wear it, seldom a professional model. Grace likes to make things to fit. When I see how they look on the models that they have chosen I want elastic everywhere!
On Friday the local radio NPR station, WYSO, ran a program on women's body image. And the new sin of being fat. First they pointed out that thin does not mean healthy. Healthy is determined by glucose and cholesterol levels, blood pressure.... Any how they said the average size US women is now a size 14. They talked to Lane Bryant about using plus size women for their plus sized line ( the usual plus size model is size 12). Lane Bryant said that they have tried several times using larger women and the styles that they model do not sell. They were convincing that this was a problem.
So my question is how much of the sizes we sell is fit and how much is fantasy?
We are working away on the garments for the Artwear in Motion because Grace is going to FL around the 12th.
First the bad. The dress was sewn together and pinned to the dress form. In the morning I walked out and saw this:
The center panel is sagging like an 80 year old face! I called Grace, then when she came up we took out those seams and rebasted them. There are 3 fabrics in this seam: shell= matelasse that stretches and gives, under lining= light weight china silk that is stable and the organza of the flounce that is also stable but circular cut so has different grains. After many bastings, and a level of frustration we decided to remove the china silk under lining and sew with a narrow zigzag stitch to allow some stretch. We ended the day twith the whole dress dissassembled.
Grace has inserted the pleated leather panels in the sides of the jacket. They look better than I had imagined!
I cut some inserts for the cuffs out of the remaining pleated leather. This looks like it is coming along nicely.
