ENTWINEMENTS

These shawls were inspired by dry landscape gardens
found on the grounds of Zen Buddhist Temples in
Japan. The raked lines of the sand reminded me of the
pleats so I added some elements to the fabric which
function as the rocks in the gardens. The resemblance
between the shawls and the gardens includes the physical
frailty of the lines in the sand and in the silk; lines that
change with time and yet remain the same with human
reforming to overcome nature’s entropy. I hope I have
captured the spirit of these austere reductive gardens
and that the wearer become engaged in the process when
wearing and caring for the Zen Garden Shawl.

The aesthetics that I aspire to in this work is Wabi Sabi. If you are not familiar with this concept there is a delightful little book, Wabi Sabi, by L. Koren.

These shawls are a limited edition series and each one is numbered and comes with a signed insert with the number. Each one is made from two yards of silk. It can be worn as a scarf or a shawl. These have gotten quite a bit of critical praise, detail of one appeared on the covers of the Surface Design Journal, Spring 2004 and the cover of Silk by Mary Schoeser

I sent 3 of these to La Jolla FiberArts for the Sensational Shibori exhibit. The colorways at La Jolla are Green Tea, Dark Green Neutral and Red Ochre. I urge you to go to La Jolla to touch and try them on. I do my best with pictures but seeing them in person is the real deal.

I have a few more here, for sale, each one is a different colorway. They are easy to wear and each is $339, shipping included. If you are interested in one of the few remaining you may leave a comment or call me (9-5, EDT) at 937.767.8961. Upon request I will post here my photos of colorways so that you can get ideas of what they look like , but remember each person's monitor shows different colors. We take credit cards and the easiest way to transact business with us now is by telephone.

Five of colorways I still have are:
20/99 Fushia Fizz
8/99 Teal
50/99 Thistle Blue (pictured above)
70/99 Nasturtium
22/99 Persian Gold

There are others, so don't be bashful, ask if we have your favorite color. I'll take some pictures and post them here so you can see.

Posted by Karren at 12:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I started a line of jackets this year. I use a gauzy silk noil, right off the bolt, to make the jackets. Then they are dyed (there were allowances for the shrinkage) then shibori patterning with discharge and over dyeing. We used all the fabric we had in Jan., having ordered more in early Dec. The new bolts came in May, and were used to make 4 small jackets. When I dyed them they had undyed pinstripes all thruogh them! Here is a shot of the jacket with a seam running though the image right of center.

This old weaver tried to pick out the undyed fiber, but no, it is spun in the yarn. The pieces I did get loose look like shedded plastic, a thin white film. UGH!!

I have continued on and here are some shots of the jacket.

It shows up as fine lines in the solid purple areas.

I'm sending the fabric back.

Posted by Karren at 01:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I'm taking some colorful jackets to Boston with me for the show. All the jackets are the same style but not the same size. The dress form is a size 12 and wears all the jackets.

This colorway is Purple Passion.

This is Red Pop.

And this is Kumquat, a delightful bright orange with olives and browns.

What I like best are solid areas and the arashi shibori areas. I decided to accentuate that in the black/champagne design.

This is my favorite.

The jackets are in a light weight silk noil, a causual fabric. Easy to wear with jeans, slacks or a dress.

Posted by Karren at 04:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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)

You can compare this with the instudio picture.

This is the Stringray outfit much discussed in this blog (a, b, c, d e, f, g, h i, j).

The textile center has put up pictures from the ARTWEAR IN MOTION show. They have pictures from the show and of the winners. This year's show wasn't a runway show but took place on a stage.

At the Center's website you can find info for entering next years show.

Posted by Karren at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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.

Posted by Karren at 07:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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.

Posted by Karren at 01:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

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.

Posted by Karren at 02:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

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.

Posted by Karren at 09:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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.

Posted by Karren at 09:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Time is nearing to send the Sting Ray outfit to Minneapolis, so we need to work on it. The runway show is 21 Oct. at the Bloomington Art Center but the garments have to be at the Center 29 Sept. When I get back from Evanston that is all we will do until about 11 Sept. when Grace leaves town. To review previous post on this outfit check here. I took the fabric for the dress, a silk matelasse that I dyed black with stitched shibori stripes placed in the skirt. It took Grace over 3 hours to steam and get the fabric on grain before she could cut out the dress. I did, in a moment of suspended judgement cut the fabric on the bias but we decided that all the difficulties were really inherent in the fabric, it was like dealing with dyed chiffon--which you can iron any size. Grace cut and basted the dress together adjusting for the shibori pattern.

In the snapshot taken in her small studio, you can see some of the adjustments we have made and all the basting in colored thread. Because of the instablity of the matelasse we decided to underline it with 5mm (very light weight) black china silk and Grace made many stays of black illusion/organza that we are using for the ruffles. I'm glad she likes the texture and drape of the matelasse because it sure has been more of a pain than anticipated. Even the ruffles have been fussy, one side would have 5 waves and the other 6!

I made two different stitched shibori patterns for across the front, one curved that I thought might look different and one on the grain that ended up looking more like the ones on the skirt. The top front yoke has lost its V -cut so matching the two patterns has become an issue.

For all the problems, I think the dress is just the right softness to go under the black leather jacket. Here is a side view and you can see the slim shape and the placement of the shibori stripes. Sorry about the bell-shaped paper with our notes right in the middle.

The jacket is also coming along, I took the pleated leather to Grace. Here is a backview of the jacket on top of the dress.

The sing ray leather with its pebbly texture is in the center back. We added a collar stand to help the collar stand up. The pleated leather will go in the open spaces at the side waists. Stitching the pleated leather to the right side and then turning it seemed pretty trickey to us so we decided to sew a thin black cotton to the opening turn that then top stitch the finished edge to the pleated leather. You can see how the ruffle of the dress carries the movement of the bottom of the jacket into the dress.

The front view show the collar and how the waves start there and continue into the bottom of the jacket. You can see the holes at the waist where the pleated leather goes. And a final shot of the side.

The sleeves have been made, except for the pleated insertion at the cuffs (only if we have enough pleated leather). Hopefully most of the technically problems are out of the way and it is just putting it together now.

Did I mention that we have another outfit we are making for the same event! More about that when we move to working on it.

On Thurs. this week I packed up 3 outfits, we made last year, to ship to a runway show in Ft. Collins CO --all part of ARTWEAR: Fashion Week. Pack them up, write up how to wear them, and write up how to return ship. It took all day! I find this a real pain, and when I attend the shows I'm not sure anyone has read any of the instructions. Anyone have any hints on how to make this easier?? I try to think of the people on the other end recieving many peoples works, each with different instructions and requirements. But it is hard to be a happy camper when the model wears turquoise bra and panties that can be seen thru the dress. Here are some collages of the three outfits I made to send along---hoping that a picture is worth a thousand words. I don't have the thousand words in me.

Posted by Karren at 07:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

At the San Francisco show I took some photos, with permission, of Mark Thomas's clothing that incorporates shibori. It is all flat shibori, but this one is arashi shibori. His clothes are beautifully made, one of my criteria that is rarely met. The scarf above is silk organza. Below you can see both the back and front of the jacket, photos taken in his booth.

I did meet two of you readers, quite delightful! Now I have to get ready for Evanston, I leave next Wed.

Posted by Karren at 09:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

How do we make clothing out of cloth with shibori patterns?

(To see the type of clothing I'm referring to check out Fiber Arts Design Book 7, pages 154-175 or Artwear: Fashion and Anti-Fashion, which has older work.)

Traditional shibori techniques, such as the resists shown in Wada's first book, developed in Japan, where the traditional cloth is woven 13"-15" wide. Hence most of their techniques work well on long narrow pieces of fabric. This is true of arashi shibori, you can do almost any length but widths greater than 15" are a challenge.

Our clothing designs, on the other hand,are based on flat pattern making, and work best on wide cloths, 36" being the narrowest we usually consider. Bias cut garments usually work best in the wider cloths, 54"-60".

Here are some of the solutions/compromises I see current shibori artists use:

•Use the traditional Japanese shibori techniques on narrow cloth and make the clothes from it. Make Japanese style clothes from narrow widths of cloth. Kimonos, kimono style jackets are common solutions. John Marshall's book has directions for tradtional garments and some modern adaptations. Weavers also prefer to make long narrow fabric, so many designs have evolved to make clothes from it. Cut My Cote by D. Burnham and Costume Patterns and Designs by Tilke (try the library it is a truly mind expanding book) are sources of historical designs for long narrow cloth. Piecing is also a way to get bigger cloth from narrow pieces. These designs do not have a modern fit. It can be unrewarding to invest this much time into a garment percieved as a bathrobe.

•Others use shibori techniques that work with wider cloth.

Itajame (fold and clamp), binding, capping, stitching techniques work on any width cloth. Those with a tie-dye back ground seem to be less limited by the size of the cloth, possibly because of their expeience wih large pieces and whole garments(T-shirts).

•Others adapt the techniques to the cloth they want to use. They get huge diameter stainless steel poles and lifting devices and bathtubs. Others just wrinkle the cloth on the pole to make it fit the pole they have.

Some wrap complete garments on poles, others make the cloth then think about the garment. There seems to be a different solution to these challenges for each maker-- that why each has her own style.

My solutions for these problems do not involve 24" ID stainless steel poles, that is Joan McGee. Most of my work is textural shibori including the few special garments I make for exhibitions or runway shows. Here are some photos of and outfit I made with Grace. It has both arashi and bound shibori. The dress was designed by draping some old pieces or samples (Grace and samples again) of my textured shibori. Then the pieces for the dress were planned with bound spider webs at the shoulder and hem and the shrinkage due to the pleating. The pieces were hemmed. Then I did all the shibori at the same time, including some extra pieces so that the color would match. We ended up using 5 of 6 pieces that we made. The dress was then constructed, a lot of hand stitching is needed to sew the already pleated material. There are ribbons and silk marquisette, that we dyed to match, to give structure to the dress. The hat has a red felt foundation.
Another oufit with with pleated shibori can bee seen at here.

Posted by Karren at 12:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last year when Grace and I were first working with leather and creating textures with shibori techniques I did a small sample of thin black leather in Bomaki. Bomaki is a technique using a pole but instead of wrapping the goods with string, the goods are sewn into a tube that fits the pole tightly. It is then scrunched to create the pleats.
Here is the sample;


I had no idea where this samples was (there are hundreds of samples floating around here) but Grace had squirreled it away and now says to me, wouldn't this look nice here for these pieces in the side of the sting ray jacket. She is pointing to the curved front side and back side pieces just at the waist. You can see the back one here:

She has enough of the jacket togther that I can see that the pleated leather gives a wonderful curve to that part of the jacket. Ok, lets go for it! It will take lots of leather since this kind of pleating dramatically reduces the length of the pieces.

Now the trick of getting bomaki to work is getting the tube sewn just the circumference of the pole. Too loose and you get glops of fabric not pleats. Too tight and you can not get it on the pole or you tear holes in the cloth where it is sewn. With silk you machine baste the silk into a tube and if it is too loose you just sew it again, tighter. This kind of adjustment with the leather is not an option.

With leather sewing makes little holes everyplace the needle pierces. Might be ok in some cases but not here. What I was playing in the pictured sample was how to make the leather into a tube without sewing. Overlapping reduces the amount of leather that you can use in the end. The overlapped portions would behave differently because they are so thick and stiff. So a more conventional seaming technique is needed. I tried several things including double stick tape and rubbber cement. The part of the sample to the left, which is the part we like, was done with rubber cement. Coat both pieces, let dry to tacky, then press together. It is easy to separate afterwards, and the sticky stuff can be removed from the back with an eraser if need be.

Grace had all the other pieces of the jacket cut so we had to hunt for enough leather to fit on the poles (min. 8.5" wide) and long enough to make the pieces. Oh yes, now we've added an insert in each cuff too.

We found enough of the thin leather, left the thicker skins, that would pleat differently, for the under collar and facings. Here they all are, moistened and stretched out with the 2 pattern pieces on top.

I'm stretching them into shape. When they are dry I careful mark them with a template, I need a "straight seam" to be able to get them on the pole. With rubber cement on the tips of all of my digits, I do get the leather into a tight fitting tube!

Of the 10 pieces of leather on the table I manage to get 7 on this little pole. The pole is ID 2" and just 18"long. Each pieces has a different size seam and it is postioned differently on the pole. I did not square off the ends of the leather pieces, just just never know when that 1/4" will make it possible to get a pattern piece out. These unsewn ends just dangle.

.

The leather is soaked in water for about an hour and now we have to wait for it to dry... maybe by Mon. It is very humid here. Then I can do the last 3 pieces. The big activity this past week is waiting for poles to dry...what excitment!

Posted by Karren at 06:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Once the silk is stitched and gathered it is ready to dye ( previous work) it needs to be soaked prior to dyeing.

Continue reading "Dyeing for sting ray outfit" »

Posted by Karren at 05:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

Grace worked on the patterns and brought them to the studio.

You can see her pinning the muslin for the jacket on the mannequin. The jacket will be made from black leather, including the sting ray leather, and the dress will be black silk with white shibori patterning
.

Continue reading "Work on the Sting Ray Outfit" »

Posted by Karren at 10:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)

Grace is coming today to work briefly on the sting ray outfit that we are making for Art in Motion to be held at the Textile Center in Minneapolis in October. There was a call for entries, a jury and now we need to make 3-6 outfits to send by the end of September.

This will be the 3rd time we have participated, a runway show is time consuming to put on so we are honored to be part of the event.

Continue reading "Outfits for runway show" »

Posted by Karren at 11:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)