ENTWINEMENTS

The work for this jacket began here, hydrangea and samples and this was the sample I liked

and then excuted on a jacket

The steps involved are first dye the jacket a mottled color

Then draw the individual floretes,

then hand-stitch the edge of each motif

Each stitched motif is gather anf bound

then discharged and dyed in a lavender grey dye-bath

After all the threads are removed, carefully, the jacket looks like this:

This jacket is also a medium, not because I have a thing for mediums but because I they were the first one sewn. Again if you are interseted come to West Palm Beach Fine Craft Show and try it on.

Posted by Karren at 10:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Here is the first finished jacket to share.

So I started with a medium jacket and added stitched resists.

You can also see the topstitching in the bands abound the edge now.

this is an over all view of the resisted jacket ready to be dyed black.

After dyeing you have to carefully remove all the resist threads. This is the most dangerous process; one slip and you make a hole in the fabric and ruin the jacket.

These are the threads I removed and here is the jacket:

This jacket is a medium size. We can make it in another size now, before all the jackets are dyed.

Posted by Karren at 04:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

No one has asked why I've been making so many samples lately. Well I’m now making

JACKETS

in addition to the scarves.

I wanted something that fits into people’s wardrobe, special but at a reasonable and just price. I decided, years ago, when I was making handwoven clothing that it was not a good idea for me to try to sew garments for sale. I had read in a trade publication that industry could sew a pair of women’s pants in 20 minutes. Here is a video of how sturdy jeans are made in 13 minutes. I knew that it would take me 2 hours to make the same pair of pants so if I wanted to make the same hourly wage as the industrial worker it would cost 6 times as much if I did the sewing on my home machine. How did me sewing them make them better, especially 6 times better, to justify the increased cost? My answer was that it didn’t.

So I wanted the jackets made with industrial sewing techniques but I wanted to dye them to make them special. This is a process called garment dyeing. It is not easy to construct a garment that will dye well after it is made. T-shirts are garment dyed but they are very simple. Thread and fabric must be the same fiber, no interfacing. Different number of layers of fabric in seams can make the dye take up different. I wanted to try making a jacket for garment dyeing and I started in October designing.

The design and fabric interact and must be developed together and then the assembled garment must be dyed to see what the successes and failures are. I went through 3 different fabrics before I found one that worked. Many jackets and parts of jackets were made and dyed. I finally had success with a lightweight silk noil.
Here you can see an early version of the jacket in this silk noil.

The cuffs have since evolved and there is now more topstitching on the bands. Once the design and fabric were finalized it was time to talk to a cut and sew shop to see if they could make them a sample and about schedule. Then make a production quality pattern and grade it. We are making sizes S, M, L, XL. Well the jackets are now made and we are dyeing them based on all the samples I have made. I will show you the finished jackets daily, as I get ready for the West Palm Beach Fine Craft Show.

A few last samples.

A black white that looks like icicles to me, but that could be a product of the local weather.

These 4 pieces were layered and then pole wraped, not smooth but with tucks and twists. The goal was to see how many layers of this cloth the discharge and dye would penetrate.

Posted by Karren at 08:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I like the pattern of these motifs but not the pink ground color; a little too sweet for my taste. So I tried it again with a more neutral, in fact the color in this sample is the rosegold from the previous entry and was dyed with those other samples.

If is aways a suprise what colors you see when you jutapose two neutral colors. Here the lavender grey still looks lavender grey but the rosegold appears quite orange. (I'm judging for the samples in natural light, who knows what colors you are seeing on your monitor.)

And just a little Japanese sample in the same vein:

Posted by Karren at 08:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I would like a color combo that is light in value, so I'm trying a white/rosegold combo. The sides were finger pleated then loosely bound to hold the pleats in place and immersion dyed. As the sample came out of the bath it looked like this:

The bath looked like this:

This bath is well exhausted, that means that nearly all the dye is on the silk. The dark spots are flame marks on the bottom of the pot. Granted this is a pale color and they are easier to exhaust than say black.

After removing the strings and drying it looks like this:

Or a detail:

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

over all view

closer

detail

These are some images I got from a now expired action on ebay of a traditional Japanese piece. I like the individual shapes and the crackle inside the shape. The stylized wisteria doesn't do much for me. I'd like to try it in a lower contrast color combo. This is a variation on capped shibori.the same technique as in these samples, These samples are more complex because the ground is mottled and I used discharge. I think that the bits of color inside the motif could be emphazied by having a simpler design.

Here I've drawn and stitched the motifs on the natural color silk. I also bound some dots.

Here I'm applying some pink dye suspended in foam (shaving cream). Note the difference between the color of the foam in the dish on on the silk as the dye leaves the foam to go into the silk.

Since the silk was damp from dyeing the pink the binding is very tight. Wet silk always compresses more. Then it was immersion dyed a lavender gray.

This picture is a little out of focus but I think that you can still see that the dye did not take on the compressed silk between the threads. The tip is not compressed and took the gray dye but you can still see pink between the threads bindings.

Here are the finished motifs. I do like the lower contrast but the pink is a little too sweet, don'tcha think. Grace said the motifs looked like lace to her. I think I'll try it again with a more neutral under color for the motifs. I think I'll lose the dots.

Posted by Karren at 03:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Works in Progress

We are very busy now trying to get ready for the spring shows.

This is our schedule for the first half of the year;

March 2-4, 2007
PALM BEACH FINE CRAFT SHOW
Booth504
West Palm Beach, FL
Palm Beach County Convention Center
I will be giving a lecture Sunday, March 4, 2:30 p.m., "Understanding Silk: Raising a Small Crop of Silk Worms"

March 30 - April 1, 2007
CRAFTBOSTON
World Trade Center, Boston
I am scheduled to give a lecture here too.

April 13-15, 2007
American Craft Council FINE CRAFT SHOW St. Paul
St. Paul RiverCenter, St. Paul MN

I am wait listed for the
April 19-22, 2007
SMITHSONIAN CRAFT SHOW.
National Building Museum, Washington DC.

May 4-6, 2007
STUDIO SALE
Studio, Yellow Springs OH

June 8-10, 2007
CONTEMPORARY CRAFTS MARKET, Santa Monica
Santa Moncia Civic Auditorium, Santa Moncia CA

If you want a reminder sent to you about any of these events, please use the yellow/red button to the right to sign up. We only send one postcard for each show that you have asked notification.

We are working hard on bring out a new item, a light weight jacket in a casual silk noil. I will share pictures soon.

We have many special pieces but I only take a few with me when I go to each show. For example the next show is in W. Palm Beach and I will not take dark, wintery pieces with me unless I have a special request. If you would like to see some special pieces, you can contact me and I will post pictures of what is available in that style and bring the ones that interest you along with me.

You can contact me by:
•leaving a comment
•sending an email to entwinements@earthlink.net
•calling 937.767.8961

Posted by Karren at 08:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is the sample from yesterday opened. The gray lavender ground is fairly uniform even between the motifs-- yeah! You can see the difference between the capped and bound motifs. Here is more detail:

This one is capped.

This one is bound, you can see the gray lavender spot in the center and the bits that radiate out.

There is something else going on here, we can see more than the starting mottled color and the ground color. The complex and detailed areas are caused by the discharge. The discharging reagent is actually sulfur dioxide, a gas, which you produce in the dye bath by decomposition. Gases can penetrate farther into the goods than liquids, such as the dye-bath, can. This means that with the same resist you will not be able to cover all the area discharged by over-dyeing. These little near-white areas between the mottled color and the ground color are the discharge halos. They sure add a degree of complexity to this design.

Posted by Karren at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

I’m thrilled that there has been much thinking and response about the Future of the Designer Craftsmen movement.

Some random thoughts provoked by all this exchange:

•There are lots of things that sell, even like hot cakes, but many fewer things that you can make money selling. Here is a story, ten part, of what is a typical situation for a craftswoman selling a modestly priced item- hand-dyed fabric to quilters. It sure seems to me that she knows her dyeing stuff, has passion and was relatively (I’ve never seen her work) good. It took her a few years to figure out that she wasn’t getting enough rewards for her time. She wasn’t even paying rent, heat, utilities…

•There are many things you can sell cheap. There is a difference in selling and making money on what you sell. You can sell cupcake pincushions, (aren’t they cute!) but it can be very difficult to make a living just selling such things. This also highlights another dilemma; Betz White made these pincushions to use up accumulated leftover felted ribbing from old sweaters, now how does she get an adequate supply to make more now?

•Very small chance of us getting rich doing this. If you want to be rich need to try another line of work. All we are asking for is a decent living and health care, and that is different for every one of us. Since we are not going to get rich we want job satisfaction. Trying to make, by ourselves, hundreds of thousands of things to sell for a pittance does not lead to much satisfaction.

•Creativity is not limited to your product but must be engaged in the process of making it too. Your creativity can be used to make better tools and improve the process. Being a slow knitter does not make your socks more valuable, doing something that no one else has thought of does.

•Some things are better left to the industrial process. Unless doing it by hand makes it better or different, you will not be able to get a fair price for your work.

•I have a small scarf, 14” x 60”, that I sell for $55. I don’t think that if I had only that size scarf I could sell enough to make a living. I do 8-10 shows a year; typically the shows are open Fri., Sat. and Sun. There are a limited number of hours available to sell and it takes just as long to sell a $55 scarf as a $550 one. And the same mirror, and care tags and packaging. I go round and round about the small scarves; do they increase my net sales or do they decrease it?? If I am busy with someone who takes an hour and a half to buy a small scarf and don’t pay enough attention to another customer who would have bought a bigger pieces... Generally if I sell a lot of small scarves, I have a poor show.

•We have many things we have things happening in the marketplace today: low wages over-seas, copying, and unaware customers. But the one that seems to me like a self –destruct button is people pretending to sell handmade items for prices that you would pay for industrial made goods.

Posted by Karren at 11:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I have dicided I want to use the lavender grey color as a ground color, now I need some colors to go with. I'm going to try some more capped shibori.

This time I am trying a mottled ground color instead of white.

Then I drew some irregular diamond shapes inspired by the individual floretes of a hydrangea

The space between the motifs is a critical factor; if they are too close the ground becomes mottled too and the design is confusing. There is an inch or more between all motifs. Then I stitched around each shape, starting and stopping in the same place.

After all were stitched I gather them up with all the poofs facing the some way. I don't know if it is better to cap these poofs or bind them. The binding tends to create a spot that serves as the focal point but just might be too busy with the mottled color. But this is a sample; I'll try both, since i have 6 motiifs I'll cap 3 and bind 3.

Now I don't want the ground to be mottled so I think I'll discharge before I dye. After a long soak in water I discharged these dyes.

The ground looks a little turquoise even after washing. But when I added the piece to the dyebath that I had already adjusted to pH 4.5 all the blue went away! Anyhow after dyeing the piece looks good.

You can see that most of the piece is grey. What is much harder to see is that the color is still there under the plastic caps. Also the color between the motifs look pretty even, at least as much as you can see at this stage.

STAY TUNED FOR THE RESULTS, check the blog tomorrow!

Actually I lost my final picture and I need some daylight to take it again.

Posted by Karren at 07:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

FULLER CRAFT MUSEUM

Carter Smith: Shibori Treasures
January 20 - May 6, 2007

Textile artist Carter Smith fills Fuller Craft with fabric, draping the Merton and Alma Tarlow Gallery with yards of his hand dyed silks. Best known for making his beautiful fabrics into unique and daring fashions, such as those worn by Aretha Franklin and Elizabeth Taylor, Smith's solo installation will feature new designs made used using Japanese shibori dyeing techniques. This exhibition includes works created over the past twenty years, which Smith says, "were too powerful to cut." Assembled here, they show the importance of material for the maker and the beauty of shibori.

Carter Smith's site.

Posted by Karren at 09:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

More sample, try 2. Revised formulas ( formulas are under the sample on the paper)-- more DOS for black but since there are no hue issues I went ahead and stitched a resist. I want the design to appear black and white and the cloth is very creamy, I think that it will read B&W but needed to test. Reformulated the blue and tried a kumquat color on this new fabric.

B&W looks good. Blue is closer but not there yet. Kumquat is too light and too yellow.

Reformulated the blue and kumquat and added fig, a lavender gray. Made some simple bindings on the blue sample. The binding worked well. I like all of the these colors. And I know that both stitching and binding work well with this fabric.

Did you notice the little yellow numbers on the samples. This is a neat pen; you write on the cloth before it goes into the dye bath and you can still read it after the cloth is dyed. Sure makes it easier to keep track of all my experiments in one dyebath.

Posted by Karren at 05:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)