27 September 2009

Sunday, 1-6 PM

Entwinements Studio, 111 Allen, Yellow Springs OH 45387

Dye small projects in a fully equipped studio

 

Stamping on Cotton

 

We will use thickened fiber reactive dyes and stamps to print.  I have many, many stamps but you can bring yours too (just put your name on them).  Bring your cotton, rayon or other cellulose fiber or silk as a T-shirt*, yardage* or bag*.  The cloth you want to print on should be white or light colored because dyes are transparent and you will see the ground color through the dye.  Wash the cloth in hot water and dry before you bring it.  Iron for a flat surface that prints clearly but wrinkled surfaces give interesting effects.  I will have many colors in the fiber reactive dyes but the adventuresome can mix their own.  You should have time to print 3 items , but that depends on the personality of the printer. The printed cloth can be taken home in a plastic bag and after 24 hours you can wash it and it will be ready to wear.

 

 Come and play in my colors.

 

$25

 

Limited to 5 participants

 

Registration is on a first come biases, you are not registered until I have your money. You can call or mail in your registration. Dyeing is messy, wear appropriate clothes and bring gloves.

 

 

 

*We can make a group order to Dharma Trading, they have many scarves, T-shirts and clothing items and yardage that are ready to dye.  I will need your registration , item(s) number and size and payment for the item(s) by the 15^th to get them here in time.

 

Registr

There are many kinds of stitched designs and a few of the Japanese names are mokume, ori-nui, maki-age.  I'm not trying to teach you Japanese but if you search this blog for these terms you will find  much information.  Also see pages 85-90 of my book.  We even had a challange on maki-age and there is a lot of info and pics.

As of this moment all participants in the class are also weavers.  Some stitched shibori  can be done while weaving.  Here is an article about handwoven shibori if you have not seen much. The way you compress the cloth, and how to dye the resisted cloth are the same whether you have laid in the the gathering threads while weaving or used a needle after the cloth is woven.  Patterns and spacing are related too. Hand stitched, not done on the loom, is more versatile.  It is hard to create images on the loom.

 Here are pictures of a woven shibori project start to finish.   Weavezine recently had an article about woven shibori on a rigid heddle loom.  The weakest link in most of these projects is the dyeing of the shibori.  I hope this short sesion in stitched shibori would lead to  sucessful dyeing of any future  shibori project, woven or not, undertaken.

In August the Sundyes will be small projects completed in one day they will all be natural dyes: Osage Orange (a Yellow), Madder, and Indigo again.  With this pallette a wide range of colors can be achieved, for example indigo over Osage Orange for greens and indigo over madder for purples.

Shibori on silk

12, 19, 26 July (3 weeks)

Please share!  The more we see the more we learn.  Sometimes it is easier to learn form someone elses' project because we  didn't come with any expectations for their project and we can see it for what it really is.

Now on to indigo, the oldest and yet the hardest dye to use.  There is already a lot on this blog about indigo since the Japanese love indigo so and it is the most forgiving dye to use for shibori, so it is great for shibori novices.  Let's just look at some pics of indigo dyed cloth:

 This is a T-shirt with a few lines of stitched shibori

I hope you can see how many colors of indigo there are.

I will be preparing the vat, all you have to do is bring your yarn or cloth ready to dye. The fiber should be cotton or other vegtable fiber to take the high pH of this vat. For those who want to know about making the indigo vat you can read instructions here.

I see periwinkle blue, oranges,  dark browns and little bits of off-white.


So bring a magazine pictures, or a sample of a color combination to get started.

So any skein will work.  A warp will not muddle all the colors together when you weave, but put in lots of figure 8 ties to keep the warp in order.  Normal size skeins will blend the colors together.  If you make long skeins, say 10 yds. (a warping board will allow you to do this) you will get sucesive bands of colors.

Anyhow, come with some damp cellulose yarn and have fun with colors!

I must apologized for the shadows in the photo, I took the pics outdoors to get true colors and it was overcast.  Just as I took the first picture we had what the English call a sunny interval.
I dyed the whole skein a sand color then I dipped a small part of the skein in a black dye pot.  I did not get black, it is difficult to get a true black, but I got shades of grey from charcoal to light.  On important point here is that I layer the black on top of the beige color, dyes are transparent and you can see both the sand and the black colors.  Here is what is left of the skein after I dyed it and used it for a weaving project. 



 Note that there are no sharp lines where a color change occurs, rather the grey starts pale and then becomes more intense the fades back to sand color gradually.  No abrupt color changes but gentle shading from one color to the next.
I wove this on a rigid heddle loom, sett 10 epi, plain weave, and used just this yarn for the warp and weft.





I love this cloth!  Random streaks of grey that cross each other. The hand of the cloth is nice too (you’ll have to take my word until you can touch it your self), stable but not too dense or heavy. The cloth looks handwoven because it is hand-dyed. It has the look of khadi ( the cloth that played a part in Gandhi’s rebellion, handspun, handwoven and hand-dyed) even if the scale is different.
The special yarn could be used in just the warp in which case the grey streaks would just be length- or warp-wise.  Or just used in the weft and the streaks would be cross- or weft-wise.

When you see a larger expanse of cloth you can see that the rhythm of the streaks of the grey is different in the warp and the weft. 


This is because they are taken from the same skein and each warp is much longer than the length of each weft shot or pick.
Then I finished the edges, hemmed with an embroidery floss to make a tiny towel.

 What is a tiny towel? It is an answer to the question, “what are you making?”  In my mind I’m just trying to make beautiful, sensuous cloth.  Of course the edges have to be finished too. 

Now about the possibilities of this technique and your skein: 

 •    You can bring a skein of 8 oz. or less.  Must be an animal fiber to dye with the acid dyes we will use.   This will allow everyone a chance to dye their skein during the workshop.  Half a pound of yarn is enough for a small project.

•    The yarn can be white, natural or a pale color.  It is hard to over-dye black and see the results.  Remember that dyes are transparent and you will see the first color through the second.  If you start with yellow or a pale neutral color you can get just about any color except white by overdyeing.  If you start with an bright purple  the colors you can achieve by overdyeing are limited.
•    Your yarn should be in a loose skein with many figure eight ties to keep it from tangling during dyeing. It should be scoured and ready to dye.  If you can bring it damp, from scouring or just soaking overnight, it will be ready for the dye pot.  If it is dry it can take ½-1 hr. to soak in water to get ready to dye.
•    I will have the resources to dye your  yarn  one color and then over-dye a part of it.  In the example above the whole skein was dyed sand then dip dyed  in black.  Or you can just dip dye the skein to get white and one color (example in white and red) or just one color on top of your pale colored yarn. 

There are many possibilities with this dyeing.  You could have the dip-dyed yarn in only bands or stripes.  If the yarn was divided into two skeins both could be dyed the base color and only one skein dip dyed and you would have coordinating skeins.  I’ve made a short warp with a well secured cross and many figure eight ties that I will dye.  The result will be less random and lead to a graduated color in the whole piece.  We’ll see.  What fun possibilities!

TO CLASS PARTICIPANTS:Before you come I ask you to email me  your ideas on what color scheme you would like to dye.  Something like shades of blue, white with sunflower yellow or wheat with moss green.  This will give me time to mix the colors and have some color you might like when you arrive.  I expect you will want to try some thing different as you see others results.  It is just nice to have a starting point that reflects more than my taste.

 

 Alpaca wool - Alpaca is used to make high-end luxury fabrics, with world production estimated at around 5 000 tonnes a year

Angora wool - The silky white wool of the Angora rabbit is very fine and soft, and used in high quality knitwear

Camel hair - The best fibre is found on the Bactrian camels of Mongolia and Inner Mongolia, and baby camel hair is the finest and softest 

 

 

Cashmere - Cashmere is exceptionally soft to the touch owing tothe structure of its fibres and has great insulation properties without being bulky

 

Mohair - White, very fine and silky, mohair is noted for its softness, brightness and receptiveness to rich dyes

 

 

 

Silk - Developed in ancient China, where its use was reserved for royalty, silk remains the "queen of fabrics"

 

Wool - Limited supply and exceptional characteristics have made wool the world's premier textile fibre

 

 

 You can bring any of these fibers to dye with acid dyes or nylon.  Other fibers will not dye with these dyes.

The following week in Paint a Skein will will work with different dyes that color cotton and other cellulose fibers.  

1.    You can just wash your yarn and hope it works.  This works 80%  of the time with purchased white or natural yarn.
2.    You can buy yarn that is PFD.
3.    You can do a true scour, this is best when you know or suspect the yarn is dirty.

Spinners do this often and have tools to help.  The tools are niddy noddys and skein winders but you don't need a tool to do it a few times. You can use tools you might have for warping, a board or pegs,  a helper or a chair back.

Here is some  help:

• How to Wind Yarn Into a Skein
  

• Finishing Yarn and Wrapping a Skein - Tutorial    A You Tube video using a chair and making the figure  8 ties.
  

• Making A Skein of Yarn With A Niddy Noddy  This has a video that is helpful if you have never seen it done

When I have finished winding the skein I tie the two ends together in a bow.  The bigger the bow the easier it is to find the end of the yarn when you go to use it.  

To control the yarns strands in the skein and keep them from tangling  figure 8 ties are inserted. Make sure these ties are very loose and there are 6 or more.  When you move the skiens in water or the dyebath  they can tangle if not well controlled with the figure 8 ties.

If you have yarn in pull out skeins or balls it can be helpful to put it in a bowl or large jar on the floor  to free your hands for winding.

Registration is on a first come biases, you are not registered until I have your money. You can call or email,  karren at entwinemnets.com,  your registration.

Dyeing is messy, wear appropriate clothes and bring gloves.

7 June 2009

Dip dye a skein

Paint a skein

Indigo Vat