Pre-washing and ironing silk scarves for the MIT and the Celtica! commissions.

I spent the afternoon washing and ironing 40 silk scarves, getting them ready for the dyeing process. Yes, I know. Some parts of my job are so terribly glamorous, no? Well...maybe not so much. But each step is necessary. This one makes sure there is no sizing or gum or oils or anything left on the silk that might interfere with how the fabric takes the dye. I'll start on the fun part tomorrow, which is actually adding color to the silk.

40 scarves sounds like an awful lot to find ideas for...until I realize that 30 of those scarves are for a commission that I'm working on for MIT. (25 grey and 5 coral colored scarves, to be dean's gifts.) And a few more will be dyed in the blue/green colorway for the singing group Celtica!. So that actually leaves me just a handful left over for playing with new color combinations. And, it leaves me a cushion of supplies on hand in case I screw up one of the commission pieces somehow. I don't foresee any troubles, but it is nice to have back-up.

So, 40 scarves, and I'll be painting at least 32 of those over the next few weeks. I'm going to be busy!

Come to think of it...busy is good.

New size of silk scarves for the Etsy shop

I just wanted to share a peek of what I've been up to. I got a commission a bit ago from someone looking for a head scarf for a friend who was undergoing chemo. She liked my hand painted silk scarves, but the rectangular shape I usually make didn't quite fit the bill. So we put our heads together, and I came up with a half dozen 30" x 30" hand painted scarves. The size works quite well for the head. I played around with them today a bit while I was taking pictures for the Etsy shop, and found they work quite well as neck scarves too. Want to see?

This is the one she chose for her friend. It heads out in the mail tomorrow.

The rest are still available, though. http://www.etsy.com/listing/80557838/silk-scarf-square-hand-painted-in-blue

http://www.etsy.com/listing/80558984/silk-scarf-square-hand-painted-in-peach

http://www.etsy.com/listing/80560128/silk-scarf-square-hand-painted-in-green

http://www.etsy.com/listing/80560971/silk-scarf-square-hand-painted-in-orange

http://www.etsy.com/listing/80563378/silk-scarf-square-hand-painted-in-pink



I do so love playing with the colors!

Kumihimo, 50 challenge, and the ties in action

A few years back, a challenge went around the arts community in the Society for Creative Anachronism. The group is coming up on its 50th anniversary, and so the arts folks issued a 50/50 challenge. The idea was to do 50 of something before the SCA turned 50. I chose two weaving challenges--one for narrow wares, and one for yardage. The idea was to weave 50 yards of each. I've been kind of distracted, but tonight I finished up the above kumihimo braid, and it came in at 5 1/2 yards long. I looked back at my records, and that pushes me over the top of the narrow wares challenge by 2 1/2 yards. DONE! It may take me awhile, but I keep plugging away at it. Now, to the yardage challenge....hey wait. Checking my records again... Wow!! I was at 43 yards out of 50 before I did the yardage for my Estrella entry this past February. That ended up being just over 8 yards long. So that challenge is done too! That was 50 yards of narrow wares (inkle, card woven, or kumihimo), and 50 yards of fabric from the floor loom, over the course of about 3 years.

If you're wondering about the kumihimo, I used cotton crochet thread. The finished braid was set up just like the new one you see on the disk. I used two threads of dark blue, and 6 threads of variegated light blue. The braiding pattern is the same one as in this tutorial: http://tangibledaydreams.blogspot.com/2009/06/kumihimo-braiding.html .

In other news, I went with my family to the theater today, to see a production of "Hairspray". It was an awesome performance! I do so love live theater. My husband and son both decided to wear silk ties that I had hand painted, to give them a test run. Thumbs up all around. Don't they look spiffy?

The ties do too.

Silk painting and color theory: blending complementary colors

I'm back to dyeing silk scarves again. I was asked to recreate the color scheme of one of the rectangular scarves, but in a 30" x 30" square instead. It will be a head scarf. I said yes...and then realized that I didn't remember how I got that exact scheme. However, I think I got pretty close here, don't you? It has a little more of the pink/purple than the original. The colors are all there--just in slightly different proportions.

While I was doing the square scarves (I made a half dozen of them, just to offer some variety of choice) I decided to play with color theory. I know from a class I took some years ago that colors that are across the color wheel from each other are called complementary colors. That would be red/green, blue/orange, and yellow/purple. If you mix complementary colors, you can get some awesome earthy tones.

So, I decided to play. I chose 4 colors of purple, and 3 colors of yellow dye. I put 4 eyedroppers of the yellows on my palette. (I used the canary yellow twice.)

Then I added a half an eyedropper of purple to the yellows.

The left two colors mixed into beautiful browns and oranges.

The right two however were a little more pink than I wanted.

So I added a eyedropper of saffron yellow to those two mixtures.

I painted the whole scarf with squiggles of color, then added salt in swirls and scatters.

Then I sat back, and watched the paint dry. When that got old, I went and got dinner, and came back later to see what I had. The salt pulled the dye into intricate patterns, and the dye lightened into a beautiful warm, rich scarf.

I have all 6 head scarves dyed, as well as one short rectangular scarf that is a test of coloration for another commission. That last one is currently drying on the stretcher frame. Next up, the scarves need to set for at least 24 hours. After the wait time, I can steam the scarves to set the color. After another 24 hour wait I can wash them and iron them dry, and they'll be good to go.

And yes, I took better notes this time.

Fulling hand woven fabric--What a Difference!

This is actually an older project, but I was talking about it briefly on Ravelry today. (I'm there as 'TangibleDaydreams'.) This was one of the first projects I wove with my hand spun yarn. The yarn is singles, from a merino wool and tencel blend roving that I picked up at the Griffin Dyeworks fiber retreat some years back. The colors were inspired by a summer family trip to the beach and ocean in Mexico. The pattern is an undulating twill design that I drafted in a workshop given by Sharon Alderman.

The interesting thing about this project to me is that I decided to see just what seriously fulling the woven fabric would do to it. So after I got it off the loom, wove in the tails, and twisted the fringe, I tossed it in the washing machine on hot and let the machine do its worst.

This is how it turned out. The fabric shrunk by at least half, and thickened up considerably. Where it had a lovely drape right off the loom (I was thinking shawl with it), it stiffened up after fulling. The pattern was partially obscured, but still showed through and gave a little bit of texture. The colors melded together.

Well, it wasn't going to be a shawl any more. But, it wasn't ruined. Instead, it turned into a seriously kick ass table runner, which I love love love. It is just the size of my dresser, so I have had it displayed there for several years now. The fabric wears like iron, and I suspect it will still be in good shape several generations from now.

(The spinning wheel in the picture is a great wheel from the 1800's that I have pressed back into service. The basket on the right comes from Prague, and has carded fleece in it that I'm gradually spinning for another project. The candle holders and the eagle sculpture were done by my father. And two of the stacked boxes on the left are hand made as well--one by a friend, and one by my grandfather.)

Suggestions for fabric paint for stamping?

Hey all, I'm looking for some advice here. I need to stamp fairly fine lettering onto a silk scarf, preferably in metallic silver. The result needs to be permanent, flexible, and washable. Anyone have a favorite brand of fabric paint for stamping? I tried Lumiere applied to the stamp with a foam brush, and that didn't give a clean image. I'll head to JoAnne's or Michaels tomorrow to pick up some other options to try, but thought I'd get some advice from folks who have been down this learning curve before.

Soft grey silk ties

I've been asked to work up some silk ties that are similar in feel to the grey silk scarves that I make.

Now, I make these by using black Tinfix dye mixed with water in various strengths, and then sprinkled with silk salt while it dries. This dye is steam set and then tossed in the washing machine. The ties can't stand up to that setting treatment though, and need to be heat set and dry cleaned instead. So, I've been making ties using Setasilk dye. The black dye with silk salt comes out looking very striking and flamboyant with this dye.

However, as cool as they are, they are not the same in feel to the scarves. So, today I tried out using Dye-na-flow dye on the ties. Here's the initial results.

The lighting wasn't the best, because I'm taking the picture late at night in the studio. But I think this has a softer contrast, and is closer to what they had in mind. I'm using black and pewter grey dyes, blending them on the tie, and then adding the silk salt. I still need to iron them to heat set them, and run them through the dry cleaners to see how the dye holds, but I'm pretty pleased with the result. I like the more pronounced wave pattern still, but the all over organic is cool too, and closer in feel to the scarves.

I'll get better pictures later. But I wanted to show the initial results. The same technique with different dyes really does give different feeling results.

From left to right, here's a scarf, the new tie with Dye-na-flow, and the old tie with Setasilk.

Hmmm. Now that I look at them, the ties are a warmer grey than the scarf is. I think that is partially a result of the different silks between the scarf blanks and the tie blanks. The ties have a creamy undertone.