Friday, January 19, 2024

Abstract Face Punch

 Project Dates:  12/25/2023 - 1/19/2024


This was a short quick project. It was a kit purchased through Etsy from Chloe Art Crafts. This was one of my self-selected holiday presents. I was searching for a kit project. Something easy and new, in the sense of a new-to-me craft. Love finding and trying out new textile tools and techniques. Rather than invest in all the tools for a new hobby, I thought to test it out first with a small kit project.

It’s funny to me how some things just don’t cross your path until they do. I had not heard of punching until almost a decade ago now. A friend was into it and introduced her fascination with it to us. They were doing something a bit different which utilized fabric cut into small narrow strips and then punched into a background fabric. I’ve been curious about it ever since, though only now with just enough motivation and curiosity to actually try it out

The kit I purchased uses a multi-ply yarn. The design is reminiscent of the sixty’s abstract artist Piet Mondrian. The colors and design motif come straight from one of his famous painting. I did another project, a sweater, based on the same Piet Mondrian style. His design was blocks of primary colors with outlines of black lines. Yves St. Laurent also designed a short dress using the same inspiration.


When my sister and I were pre-teens, we received many different kinds of art kits as presents. We tried everything from color pencils to jewelry-making. Mom loved it because it kept us occupied for hours at a time. We tried paint-by-numbers, crafts kits to make tile ashtrays, and there was one even one that reminds me of this punch kit. I don’t recall how it was marketed, but it was a two-dimensional art kit. The background was a painting cardboard with a stamped design. The motif was abstract in the same style as this art piece from Chloe. The outline was done with black cord glued onto the surface. Then there were colored tile chips, like tiny odd shaped grains the size of peppercorns. After the block areas were outlined, glue was dispensed into the bordered areas and the colored chips sprinkled in to fill in with color.

This project went fairly quickly. The result is satisfying. The effort is probably not something I will invest more time with. It just doesn’t provide the same level of satisfaction as some of my other textile hobbies. It was a fun and quick tangent, but I will leave punching as an interesting side trip and occasional attraction, but nothing more. 

Enjoy!

Alex







Monday, January 8, 2024

Pokeberry Stash Blanket

 
Project Dates: August - December 2023

The last several projects I have undertaken have taken a familiar genesis. As I near the end of one project, I get an idea for another one. It becomes persistent. The nearer I am to closing the former, the more persistent and essential, or rather more imperative the next becomes. I am certain there is a psychological connection related to the desperateness of not having another project in the wings. What dire straits I would indeed be within if I find myself without a project in hand. The joke, is that I have several bins of projects waiting to be finished, a list of projects I want to try, but this one that becomes insistent next exists on neither of those avenues. It’s almost as if there is a petulant child that wants to have its turn, as if it never received its turn.

            I have managed to retain some discipline thus far. I did create a project file, and have documented along the way.

            One of the initial motivators was to weave a project that was handspun and dyed. It provides more control, theoretically, anyways. In actual practice, there is still a great deal of directional changes, and spontaneity and happenstance that alters the end result almost unrecognizable from the humble beginnings.

            Another motivator was to create a soft blanket or coverlet with a circular twill pattern, something that has intrigued me for a while.

            Lastly, I was hoping to make this almost exclusively from my stash.

            So, how did this fare? Since the pattern required a taffy weft for every other pattern weft, half the weft was handspun. The other half was inspired by my stash of possum yarn. After doing a sample of the light dove gray in the stash, I realized that a much darker, or even black tabby weft would better contrast the colored handspun. I looked for a match to the possum blend and found the original seller, but thankfully they have replaced the ten percent of nylon in the original in my stash with silk, retaining the possum and merino wool proportions.

            Wool fiber from my stash made up the handspun.

There was a beautiful light brown indeterminate wool roving that came to me in my early learning to spin years a couple of decades ago. The other was purchased more recently over the last decade whilst I was in festival mode, searching and adding to my stash regularly.

            I determined and weighed out how much wool I would need for weft, and also measured and cut my warp thread.

            Both the wool roving and warp threads were dyed using some leftover Dharmaset that had supposedly expired a year ago, but was ultimately still useable. All the stash fiber was hand-painted and dyed using this.

After that was done, I had left a large amount of pokeberry that decided to grow up in many of our flower beds. I collected and used this to overdye some of the warp and weft.

At the beginning of my fiber enthusiast expansion period, a time when I dove headlong into expanding into all aspects of fiber art including weaving, spinning, and dyeing, I had dyed several hanks of different wool threads with mullein and logwood. The logwood turned out a lovely blue purple, but the mullein, beautiful I am sure, was a bit too brown and yellow for my tastes. Three small hanks have lingered in my stash these past couple decades. I opted to throw that into the pokeberry bath.

An interesting accident occurred. I opted to mordant the mullein and logwood dyed fiber first. A lot of the logwood dye entered the mordant water, and I couldn’t believe how much dye came out of the fiber. Unfortunately, I didn’t think about taking a photo beforehand, just after the Pokeberry turned it a beautiful raspberry red. I take it back, I found a photo, just not very good resolution, because it’s buried in a larger photo of the section of stash it was buried within.

The piles of fiber were studied for contrast using the black and white photo technique. The goal was to have some gradient occurring in the color movement as the colors moved across a muted rainbow. The original design intent was to also have shading from dark to light move across the warp from one side to the other. The roving’s were bundled together into their designated skeins.

I spun a three-ply worsted choosing to spin each roving bundle at a time. Each single was spun, then the three singles plied. This was very fun and meditative to watch the color variations occur as each single built up on the spindle. Moving the singles through my fingers to ply onto a large bulky sized spindle was like weaving magic. My young feline friends learned for the first time to live alongside a spinning wheel. It was amazing how quickly they learned to leave it alone.

Once all of that was ready, I laid all the fiber warp and weft onto a table to arrange them. The warp was dyed purple to blue to green. the handspun ranged from raspberry to orange, brown, forest green, light greenish blue, to purple. It was a pleasant surprise, even though planned, to have the colors move from one end of the warp to the other aligning pleasantly.  This too was accompanied by my fur friends and while on the table, very surprisingly, let me arrange and sley the reed without any mishap or playful mutterings.

The loom, however, was another matter entirely. Keeping the cats away required constant attention during the weaving process. I get it. There were these tantalizing squiggly wool worms constantly waving in their face. What respecting cat would resist? But that was really only in the beginning. This wasn’t their first rodeo with me at the loom with their company, but it had been a while so they needed to relearn what toys were theirs.

Weaving went fast. It was fun to watch the pattern build up. It was woven very loosely to allow for fulling it later into something wooly, light, and fluffy. In a little over a month, the blanket was woven.

I often dither about fringing and how to edge the product. I usually overcomplicate matters. This time, I opted to leave some of the warp as fringe, no twisting, just a nice simple hemmed stich using same color weft on each end, raspberry at the beginning, and green at the end.

Oh, yes, I should mention that the last two half segments at the end, a beautiful darker green, were especially dyed to coordinate and contrast with the beginning weft which featured a soft and fluffy boucle. Another step in this project had to be added. The end had to be dyed to order! I say this tongue-in-cheek because I love a multi-step project like this.

Fulling was done by agitating gently by hand in lukewarm water until the fiber was locked into place. Then I put it into a dryer at cool temperature checking every few minutes until the blanket was nicely fulled. It finished by air drying on top of that large flat space made by the tops of the front load side-by-side washer and dryer.

The end result was exactly as anticipated. It is luxuriously soft and has that velvet soft feel like wool with a little lanolin. Perfect to take the chill off.

Wednesday, August 30, 2023

Summer Storm Towels

Project Dates: June - August 2023

Samson and Three Towels


What inspires me? One avenue of inspiration is practicality. I know that sounds boring. But, making something that is then used, brings art to everyday use. It brings the satisfaction of making, to the forefront. Hands touching something made, brings satisfaction that is ultimately rewarding.

 

We have lots of dish drying kitchen towels. You know the ones I mean. Those thin cotton polyester towels that are supposedly good for drying dishes. Which I suppose they are fine for. But, what we are sorely lacking is hand drying towels. Do you know how often hands get wetted in the kitchen sink on a daily basis? A lot. One could say I have a compulsive disorder, or at least, a tendency towards that end of the spectrum if not the actual diagnosis.

 

These makers’ hands gravitated towards that need. I love the feel of hand-made kitchen towels. I use cotton crackle which lends a luscious absorbency to the fabric. These towels also satisfied two other artful desires: mud dyes and M’s and O’s.


Bengala Dyes

I ran across Bengala mud dyes a few years ago. They dye using cold water and without the need for a lot of equipment. I bought a trio of colors in the orange, gold, and brown spectrum. 

Gist Project Inspiration

The M’s and O’s weave was inspired by Gist yarn and a design by Christine Tsai. My interpretation utilized the color spectrum of the mud dyes I had purchased a few years ago, namely the setting sun on earthen soil. I also wanted to add some muddy rain laden cloudy blue sky to the mixture so added natural cotton crinkle space dyed with just a pastel bit of the brown sienna mud dye, and added some purchased white and pale blue cotton in 20/2 which I doubled up.



The colors were ordered so that the blue sky was bordered by white clouds that turned into cloudy rain clouds before exposing the bright sunny golden yellow sunset.


Horizontal Warping Reel


The project was woven on my LeClerc 4-shaft floor loom. The cotton crinkle yarn came from my stash. I used a horizontal mill to measure the warp. I threaded the reed on a table. 


Rumi Guarding Warp Thread

I should mention I have cats which are a rather recent event, well, maybe not recent if you consider a year a very long time. But to me it seems like just yesterday I was blissfully ignorant of the nirvana possible in a fiber room without cats. For now, the cats have nirvana, and I am pulling my hair out!  They’ve gotten better. I was able to use the warping mill to measure the thread being careful when the cats sniffed the contraption, wondering what kind of new toy entered their den, so as to prevent any harm from coming to them. 


Keeping them off the table while I sleyed the reed was a definite impossibility at this stage, so that was a closed-door exercise. The dyeing also took place elsewhere since my fiber studio is limited to dry techniques only. The laundry room must acquiesce its position in the household when dying comes to the forepaws of my maker hands.


Samson Inspecting Sample

Weaving with the cats is doable. Actually, even pleasurable. They have finally gotten the idea that I don’t want them on the loom, and I prefer they not scratch at the heddles, or paw at the fabric on the wheel drums. I did have to devise a pseudo covering for the threads at the back of the loom, because, well, they are cats, and it is thread, and I mean, that is asking a bit much! But, they take turns laying behind me on the bench or on the table near the loom, which is ultimately pleasurable and the reason they are in my life!

 

The first towel made was the very orderly and symmetrical striped version. The second planned towel was made with the clouds parting and settling upon the horizons east and west. The third towel was an unexpected extra length of warp for an almost full grown third towel. The day and clouds were in full-on tug-a-war for this one.


Weaving In Process

The whole project took just a little under two months in my spare time in my life taking care of cats, others, and a full-time job. It was a very pleasurable process to design, fantasize, play with color interpretation, try a new technique with the mud dyes, and a new pattern to me of M’s and O’s. They have just gotten their first use, soft and absorbent, and they are a memorable experience. Perfect for this maker and planner. Until the next project…

 

Alex

 



Three Finished Towels



References

https://www.gistyarn.com/products/ms-and-os-towels-weaving-pattern?variant=43990086910191