ENTWINEMENTS

I am working on some colors on a new silk fabric; this requires that I adjust even old formulas. The new fabric is a silk noil; duller, matte and cream colored instead of true white like the china silk I usually use. I am working with Lanaset dyes.

To make the whole process so as painless as possible I mix up a large bucket of dye bath. This is easy for me since I add my additives based on the volume of the bath not on WOF. So 1g/L works for the samples and in the batch bath. I adjust the pH then just keep the bucket handy. When I want to dye a small sample I just dip out of the bucket and I’m ready to go.

Similarly I make up 0.1% Stock solutions to use (actually they were made the last time I was doing samples and since they keep well, so I just used them). I usually dye 5g swatches so the dilute stock helps with accuracy.

Then I use 3 flasks that I can put at the same time into a constant temperature bath. I have to stir by hand but a thermostat controls the temperature. So I set it at 40°C to start then to 60° and last to 85°C.

Here are 3 swatches I did in about 1 hour; black, purple passion and a new denim color. The black could be a little darker it has a bit of a charcoal effect. Swatch two looks good but the blue needs the hue blackened and value darkened.

Posted by Karren at 12:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I do not believe that socks sold retail for $22 (previous entry and comments) in a venue with handmade items leads to anything but unrealistic expectations about the price of things made with care that show the head, heart and hand of the maker. Ditto for anything that wholesales in the same circumstance for $10.

I don't believe that it is an elistist attitude. It is based on obeservation and experience. Some of the assumptions I make are:
Everyone deserves to made a reasonable living.
Everyone deserves health care.

When a person comes to a craft show and expects to pay $22 for a pair of hand-knit socks they will NOT pay $300 for them no matter how wonderful they are or how much money they have. Perceived value , in the mind of the buyer, comes from experience and exposure. Having seen socks for $22 in the same venue, then seeing socks for $321 the reaction is WHOAHHHH!

Is $300 unresonable for a pair of hand knit socks? Lets say that it takes 5 hours to knit a sock, that includes picking the yarn and colors, making a swatch, knitting the sock, finishing the ends, washing, blocking, labeling and packaging. This means that decsion to make the socks is begun at 9AM, and both are finished at 9PM with 2 hour of breaks for meals etc. I think this is a very fast hand knitter.

Now if we use the simiplest (from Wendy Rosen's book, pg. 97) estimate we have (see similar conversations here:
one third labor and materials=10hours x $10/hour + $7 for yarn=$107
one third overhead; rent , utilities, business insurance, computer, tools (knitting needles), office supplies, bookkeeping
one third selling costs: jury, booth fees, booth, photogrophy, printed materials such as postcards and care cards, travel, hotel, meals....

So I estimate that these should socks sell for $321. Thus the maker could earn $20800/year for this labour if she knits 40 hours for 52 weeks. This does not include the time on the road to travel and sell. This is a modest income and may not be enough for health insurance.

I have not seen anyone selling socks at the craft fair where I exhibit, wonder why? In fact I don't know of any hand-knitters, all the knitwear is machine knit. Then I looked at Etsy, a venue for selling hand made items used by hobbists and novices who typically do not charge overhead or selling costs in their prices and usually only add a bit to the cost of materials. I only found four pairs of hand knit socks (a, b, c, d) and their average price is $32 not $22!

This does not mean that YOU should pay $300 for a pair of hand knit socks, I wouldn't but I hate socks. But some one who has a fetish for socks and knows that there are somethings that can only be done by hand should know that this is a fair price for hand knit socks. We are selective about our luxury items, we can all afford one or two: some chose Starbucks everyday, I buy $425 manufacture silk scarves and hopefully someone else will want luxury socks.

It is possible that it is wiser for this knitter to send 20 hours knitting a sweater that would then sell at a fair price of around $650 than to try to sell socks. People think that small things should be less, and are more likely to pay an appropriate price for a sweater than for the socks. There are other things that the knitter can do to reduce the price of the socks; hire another knitter and teach her how to make the socks too. This way the overhead and selling costs are spread out over more items reducing the costs of each. But this can lead to another and yet another knitter and to a debate at which point it stops being hand-made and becomes manufactured. CODA studies showed that average craftswoman, working alone in fiber, earns $15 000/year, not a viable income for most of us.

The other choice is to use a knitting machine to speed up the work. The big problem here is that if it can be done by a machine that the deep-pockets manufacturers can do it cheaper and sometimes even better. They may not think that your design is worth doing but if they do they can do it cheaper or overseas with cheaper labor.Maybe she should just design socks for a small (maybe herself) or larger manufacturer. We know of some that have made this choice. Where should they sell?

The question now is not how to make something by hand, but how to make something by hand that can only be made by hand. The item should be unique and show the head, heart and hand of the maker. It must be visually stunning to grab the attention of the buyer. If industry can make it, they can do it cheaper. Even if you make, by hand, something that industry can make, it only has the precieved value of the industrial product.

As you can see we have ventured into compromise territory. Each maker makes different choices to keep the prices in check. There are many debates here: how many employees, what machinery to use. This is where juries and standards come in. The buying public, including you and I when we are buying, want it all: low prices and the uniqueness of hand-made. Experience tells them that they can almost get it -made in China or Thailand, by people working for lower wages. If we want to sell them our work, we must present them with a high quality made piece, visually intriguing and educate them to see the head, heart and hand of the maker. A few will see the difference. We must also educate them to pay a fair price so that we can live a decent life.

Posted by Karren at 08:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Here are some more images of Pat's lovely work and her words.

This is a piece that was capped repeatedly using discharged and dyed with vat, acid and Sabracon dyes.

This is an orinui pattern bound on a rope with a forked bamboo stand and dyed with natural dye.

This one is another bound on a forked bamboo stand.

This is a tazuna variation also bound on a forked bamboo stand also discharged and using various dyes.

And this is a spectacular installion:

These two are from an installation for the Christmas concert/service at Christ Chapel in 2005. There were 24 12-yard panels. The first picture is from the finale with the chorus and the second is a close-up of a panel on the east side.

Posted by Karren at 09:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

At the Arts Center of Saint Peter in Minnesota in the Colonel Theodore G. Moline Gallery:
Jan. 11-Feb. 11 - Pat Freiert: Surface Play / shibori & Lee Salminen: Squares and Os / paintings & prints. Reception: January 13, 2-4 p.m.

Pat does lovely work and you can read a bit about her here.

Her work that I've seen in person is more exciting than this image so I contacted her and asked her to email me some others. I'll put them up as soon as I get them. Go see them in person if you can.

Posted by Karren at 09:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I"ll start with disclosure: I make my shibori here in the USA by hand in my small studio. I sell what I make at Fine Craft Shows. These shows have standards and jurys. This is my source of income.

I feel that there is a real disconnect between handmade and prices. If people walk in the door to a Fine Craft Show expecting to buy things under $50 they will have a bad day and so will the exhibitors.

I have mentioned before that I didn't think that silk screened T-shirts were handmade but you can see that in the comments others did. We have no consenses on what handmade is. But even without that I bet we have some common ground about handmade.

Handmade is not manufactured the way most of the things in our lives are. Manufacturing has as it s goal to make each item as effeicently as possible, yet relatively well made. The process of manufacturing is well thought out and if a jig or robot makes the process more effecient it is used. The cost of the jig/robot is spread out over thousands. That gets us lots of affordable things. Handmade will take longer for each item and make fewer of them. It can be the fewer part you are after (such as with the silk screened T's) or the longer part. Longer can mean more thoughtfully, or by a process that is not available to manufactures.

Longer means more labor costs. US (or Japanese or Finnish) labor is expensive because of the standard of living.

So if you want something handmade here at home how much should you expect to pay for it? If someone offered to sell you handmade socks for $22 what would you think:
1) ¡WEEEE!
2) not handmade.
3) not made in the USA
4)all of the above

Handmade is implied by context, there is nothing on the website that says handmade---wise. I found this site from ACRE, they sent me a buyer's guide and Shiborigirl mentioned them. This is run by the wholesalecrafts.com people. It is for US and Canadian craft artists and I'm interested because they are supposed to be a growing sales venue for crafts. (If you use the figures supplied in the article that is an average wholesale order of $211, hardly the stuff of a solid business.)

Do venues such as this that promote CHEAP crafts help or hurt our market? If you want cheap, manufactured goods are a better value for your money. Fine Crafts should offer you something not available in manufactured goods at a very different price.

Posted by Karren at 02:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

When one looks at an individual craftsman one can always invent some reason why their business has declined (not enough new stuff, only party clothes,....) but if one looks at their vendors one can can get a bigger view of the market.

I've talked to two silk vendors that service the wearable artists. Both agree that there has been a drastic downturn in the market since 9/11. One said last year sales were down by 20% and that it had been like that since 9/11. Asked how much of that was due to artists, she said that she didn't know the overall decrease was for all-- artists, fabric stores and manufactures. One new trend is the delivery of silk to overseas locations.

The other silk vendor said it all started 9/12 when everyone cancelled their orders. The silk was on the boat (it takes long lead times to get silk from China) and they had three quarters of a million dollars of silk that it took a some years to liquidate. They say that artists that used to buy $25 000-$40 000 each year have gotten out of business an now just buy $1 000 in a year. They now have a additional new, different, business that consumes half of their efforts.

To me this is even more telling than the loss of one of the artists. These vendors sell to all tiers of the crafts market and to people who do many techniques and all over the country.

Posted by Karren at 08:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Someone lost all of her resists. By this I mean that she made the resists, dyed the cloth and opened it up and it was all black, no undyed areas. She blamed it on the lightweght silk. Here's my take:

No, the problem is not the the silk but the technique!

I use the lightest china silk everyday.

Did you soak the silk in water before you dyed it? If not the dry silk will wick the dye under the resists. This is by far the most common step to neglect. Wetting out your goods before dyeing is a standard procedure.

Loose resists also do not work very well. Shibori creates the resists areas by compression; this means that the the resists must be tight enough to compress the cloth. With lightweight or porous silk this can require extra care, especially with stitched resists. For stitched resists in the lightweight or porous fabrics:
-stitch all the lines with a strong double thread
-gather each line
-spray the cloth with water to dampen; the damp cloth will now compress 30-50% more than the dry cloth
-gather as tight as possible and tie-off
-soak in water to wet out throughly
-dye

If you want to discharge scarves with resists you must pay attention to all of the above steps. The discharge reagents will penetrate even farther than the dyes do; this means that it is even harder to create resists for discharge than for dye.

I must add that not all techniques will work with all fabrics; this is where sampling comes in. For example short lines (<3") of stitched shibori in silk chiffon have never worked for me. There simply isn't enough cloth to compress itself . But the same design in a silk broadcloth, a much denser cloth, works.

Posted by Karren at 09:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

From the Rosen Group, in NICHE Magazine, for craft retailers, I found this article, "The Times They are a Changin" , by Lynda McDaniel. The site is a little confused, but worth persevering. The emphasis here seems to be on affordable, even if objects must be must be made industrially, oh yes, and free enterainment too please. I've seen this trend too; people's time is so scarce that they want to do more than one thing with a trip/their time.

Dennis Stevens, who has a blog, "redefining craft", gave a talk at CODA in 2006 that you can hear too.

I did learn that high price alone is a turn-off to Gen-Xers because this cyncial group thinks that the prices are a scheme of big, corrupt corporations to separate them from their dollars. I have seen their aversion to high priced/refined objects and not being of this generation I don't understand all the facets of this aversion. Another facet, I believe, is the care such objects take.

Stevens has interesting insights into the generations take on crafts but his condemnation of the marketplace, the most democratic of all the 3M's is suprising or illplaced. The market is changing fast but the museums and media continue is their same old ruts. He is right in that there is a luddite componet in the crafts community but I find it more in retailers than in the makers. The museums and magazines show no signs that they know a Web 2.0 exists.

He also points out the energy and innovation that is in the DIY community.

Terms/concepts that I have discovered from Stevens are:
distributed learning community
community of practice.

We are both, aren't we?

Posted by Karren at 01:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Glennis of Shibori GIrl offered her shibori group on Flickr in a comment, I'm reposting it here so that you all see it.

I set up a flickr photo pool for shibori called "all things shibori" a couple of months ago- it has about 9 members- it would be great to see more people join and add their work!

http://www.flickr.com/groups/shibori/

Make comments, tell me what you want, like or don't. Try some itajime and share.

Posted by Karren at 09:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In my thinking about the crafts shows I know our customer is mature women. I think this is a neglected but very important segment of the buying public.

From an email from aList News Letter vol. 7…

Boomers Boost Business!

Today's seniors, also known as Baby Boomers control 40% of the disposable income and 77% of private investments in the United States. Baby Boomers are savvy, loyal consumers who crave luxury and love to share their wealth with their extended families. Boomers have incredible buying power and are among the fastest-growing group of potential customers in the world.

Posted by Karren at 10:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This is Calvin Klein's shibori print bed linens. And now you know how the design was developed even if this is a printed version. See this ; granted we haven't worked our way up to cloth yet, but we will.

Are any of you doing any of this? Do you have pictures, do we need to set up a site on Flickr where we can all share itajime?

Posted by Karren at 11:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Here is an article in Washington Post about the decline of their "craft market", Twilight for the Kimono Weavers.

A gentleman in the article brings up the sin of preciousness. I wonder if this is not a sin that we have overindulged in too. Do we make objects that are more fit for museums than comtempory life style, just as a Yamaguchi kimono has.

Posted by Karren at 01:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This ia a follow up to The Future of the Designer Craftsmen Movement.

Here's an article about passion and business ( the assumption is that master craftsmen have passion)....ABC Home and Paulette Cole.

I would add that it is also about perseverance.

Posted by Karren at 02:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here are two more sheets of paper I did with the right triangle fold described here. This is also the fold that was used to make these two Japanese pieces (I, II). We have an idea how these Japanese pieces were made; precise right triangle fan fold, two colors and a very quick controlled dip.
Mine were allowed to absorb more ink and look very different.

I looove the fuzzy edges of the design where the ink diffuses in.

Another shape that you can fold for itajime is an isoscelese triangle. The goods are fan folded in one directions as before then the triangles are formed in the second folding. This will give the designs 6-fold symmetry, more like snowflakes.

You have a long narrow rectangle at the end of the first fan fold. The first fold will be at a 60 degree angle.

You will some kind of device to measure the angle, a protractor is the first that comes to my mind but the first one I found in my studio was a ruler used by quilters with rotary cutters, that had a 60 degree line marked.

This first fold goes to the center of the triangle, not all the way. After you make the next fold you will see the entire triangle.

Keep folding back and forth in this manner, matching edges of the paper packet to the edges of the triangle and matching the points. The top side will have a half triangle .

The back side may or may not finished with a full triangle. Keep folding the little bits until nothing sticks out beyond the triangle.

When this paper was all folded I dipped all the edges into sumi ink like I did the others, to form a grid.

Here are two grids I made.


You can see that the hexagon has six-fold symmetry like snowflakes and this is the fold used to make a previous entry.

If any of you are trying this, how do you think this piece was folded? Stunning, eh?

Posted by Karren at 01:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Folding is the first step in itajime. I’m going to practice on paper since it is the easiest to fold. The goal today is to produe grids or networks by dyeing the edges just one color.

I have some rice paper I bought but any absorbent paper will work. Absorbent papers you may have in your house include paper towels and coffee filters. Test any paper you want to use to see that it is absorbent. It does not have to be as absorbent as a paper towel but if it doesn’t suck up some water it won’t work. I am using sumi ink today; it was the largest bottle of ink in the store. You need plenty to pour into a shallow dish. You will dip the folded paper into the ink so the ink needs to be about ¼” or 0.5cm deep and the dish needs to be bigger than the folded paper.

The trick with all itajime is to fan fold (or accordion fold, different words same fold) the goods so that each edge is exposed to the ink/dye.

Here you can see that each edge can touch the ink.

You can now dip the folded edges in ink/dye. If you don’t have a dish or tray the length of the paper you can loosely curl it around to fit in your dish. This tends to open it up more in some places but that can create interesting variations.

This was curled up and opened in the middle. You can also see that all the folds did NOT
line up precisely and consequently some folds were too high to touch the ink. Precision in folding is rewarded with every edge getting ink.

Or the paper that is fan folded can be fan folded in the other directions. The most obvious fold is a square.

Just make sure that you go back and forth folding. If you go over and over in folding you will create and inside and outside and the dye will have difficulty getting to the inside.

Here I am just dipped all the edges in the sumi ink.

Even in the second fan fold it can be difficult to get the ink/dye to the innermost layer. Here I am peeking to see if the ink came all the way to the inner layer.

Folding squares makes an all over grid.

Now the second fold can be a right triangle, again back and forth, also called a flag fold.

Here I dyed all the edges.

Now the ink did not get to all the insides of all the folds; it did penetrate on the right but not on th left. This means that one bar or line of the grid will be missing in the overall pattern.

Now the pattern is a grid with diagonals making a cross in the center. Just because they are done the same way doesn’t mean that they will look the same, but they will have the same symmetry.

To be continued...

Posted by Karren at 03:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)