Phoenix heat, socks, silk, and night photography

Yes, it is blasted hot in Phoenix this time of year. The car reading does in fact say 121F. Though I took that a few days ago. Right now it is 'only' 108F.

So what have I been doing? Trying to stay in my nice air conditioned studio during the day. I've got a couple of clients that I've been working with. The first sent me a picture of the inside of a sea shell, and asked if I could make a silk boho-kimono inspired by those colors. It took two tries, but I'm pleased with the result. She was too!

I have another client who requested a sock-of-the-month for a year. I've been having fun with that, too. I've got June & July taken care of. But, I've found that many of the sock yarns that were my go-to choices have been discontinues. Today, that got me out of resting mode, and I ordered a sample of Web's Franklin sock yarn. It is undyed, which means that I'll be able to play in the dye pots and make my own sock creations. Well, if the yarn works well in my machine, wears well, and feels good to the touch. Which is why I went with the sample, rather than the full 4 lb cone of yarn. I'm hoping it will work out, but willing to experiment with a couple of sources until I find a yarn that I really like, that is still affordable to use for sale.

So, I work in the studio by day. And, try to leave going outside for my walks and other activities to the night time, when hopefully the temperatures have dipped below triple digits. That means I've been experimenting more with night photography. I'll keep working on that, but I'm enjoying some of the results I've been getting.

Next up? A road trip to get out of the heat. Stay tuned!

Hand painted silk belly dance veils

I've been experimenting with painting big pieces of silk, for use as belly dance veils. These have been 45" x 108". The blanks are available from Dharma Trading Company, in two different weights. The picture above is the 5mm weight. My daughter (there in the picture) says it is light and floaty, very responsive, and moves with the slightest of breeze. That makes it lovely for indoor work, but kind of problematic for outdoor work where there might be some wind. It was also more likely to snag from the little pins when I put in on the frame to paint.

Here it is on the frame, with my very tall son for size reference. I paint it in sections, working from one end of the frame to the other, adding the salt as I go along. I want to make sure the edges are working wet into wet, so I spray it with water as I go. By the time I reach the end of the painting, the beginning end is already quite dry.

Here's the second veil I did, on the floor ready to be rolled up into the paper to go into the steamer to set the dye. This is the more sturdy, 8mm weight fabric. It was easier to deal with on the stretcher frame--I didn't have to be quite so careful with it, as the fabric wasn't quite so delicate.

I had my daughter try this one out too. She said she was fighting the fabric a little bit more than the lighter veil, but that it was easier to deal with when there was a breeze. And she also thought it would be easier to do some of the more challenging veil tricks with this weight. I'd say the 8mm weight would probably work better for those dancers who do outdoor shows.

Given the time and materials involved, the lighter weight veil will sell for $110, and the sturdier one for $120. But unless I get a commission, it will take a little while for these to appear in the Etsy shop. (tangibledaydreams.etsy.com) Why?

Because I got my order of yarn in today! Time to put away the silk for a bit, and go back to the loom...

Rock Doodles and silk painting

Ok, this was more relaxing and more fun that it ought to have been. A smooth river rock + a Sharpie + some spray clear coat = a Rock Doodle. I think these could get to be addictive. No, I don't know what I'll use them for, besides leaving around to look cool. Ideas?

And on slightly more practical fronts, I'm back to painting silk scarves again. This batch came out of the steamer the other night, and is waiting to be washed and ironed. The silk in the picture is damp, so the colors are darker than they will be on the finished scarves. But I'm really liking these color combinations. I think I may use some of the same combos on some larger silk ruanas.

I'm particularly eager to see how the red ones turn out. I've had an issue finding a red dye that doesn't turn pink with this technique, and lots of people are asking for true red scarves. Here's hoping that the washing/ironing process doesn't pastel these out too badly!

Watching the scarf dry: salt method on hand dyed silk scarves

I've been painting silk scarves for the past few weeks now. First I got an order for 20 grey scarves. I steamed those yesterday, and will wash and iron them tomorrow so I can ship them out on Thursday. Then, as long as the frame was set up anyway, I decided to play in the color!

To make these scarves, I paint them with silk dye and then put silk salt on them. As the scarves dry, the salt pulls at the dye. I'm always fascinated by the wonderfully intricate patterns that result! On this last one, I took a few pictures as I was going along, so you could see the magic too.

On this first one, I've just put the salt down on the wet scarf. It has had just the amount of time that it took me to dig up my camera to get to work.

Then, it was time to ignore the scarf and let the salt do its thing.

Making progress! But I wanted more. I kept the salt in place, and waited until the scarf was quite dry.

Now, that is more like it! The colors get lighter, partly because the scarf is dry here, and partly because the salt has pulled at the dye.

Once I brushed the salt off of the scarf, this is what I ended up with.

Such a fascinating process! I love the controlled chaos of it all. I choose the colors, and the placement of the salt crystals, but there isn't any way to totally predict the outcome. Pure magic.

I'll hang the scarf for a day or so, and then steam it to set the dye. A day or so after that I'll wash it out and iron it dry. The color will lighten just a bit more as the excess dye washes away, and the ironing process will give the finished scarf that lovely silk sheen to it. I look forward to seeing the finished product.

Now...what colors should I try next.....

Silk prep and drop spindles

There. My least favorite part of silk painting is done: the initial prep work. After several hours standing at the ironing board, I now have 24 extra large silk scarves all washed and ironed and ready for the dye. Next up is playing in the colors! These scarves will end up being a dozen of my silk ruanas. Now that my photography class is almost done for the summer (tomorrow is the last day), I can devote a chunk of time to making things to re-stock the Etsy shop. And since I love my own prototype ruana so much, I plan on adding the silk ruanas to the product line. Stay tuned for some color shots!

Oh, and just for fun, here is a picture of my drop spindle collection. Over on the 365 project (http://365project.org/lissamc/365) I'm posting a picture a day for a year. Last night I realized I hadn't taken a picture all day. I haven't missed a day yet since January 1, and I wasn't about to start now. So I looked around the studio, and saw the canister full of spindles. I put them out on some black poster board, and took the shot. I kind of like it.

And now I think I need to find a better way to display my spindle collection than just tucked into a canister. Maybe a shadow box, so they look like this picture? Or a mobile, hung from the ceiling? Or a display rack? What do you think?

Hand Painted Silk Ruanas: New product proof-of-concept

If you'll remember, a while ago I mentioned that I was experimenting with painting silk panels to try to make a ruana out of. I included a shot of one of the panels on the stretcher frame drying. (http://tangibledaydreams.blogspot.com/2012/05/spinning-wheel-deals-and-silk-painting.html) Well, I steamed those panels to set the dye a few days ago, and today I washed them, ironed them, and sewed them together into a finished product. And I am absolutely tickled with how they turned out!!!

And of course, I took pictures.

 

So, I had two big rectangular scarves. I matched up the edges, and pinned one edge half way up the side.









Well, almost half way up the side. You can see here that I folded the scarves in half to find the mid point, and then pinned up to about 2 1/2 inches shy of that mid point. This is because I want the finished silk to hang evenly from front to back on the body. The mid point needs to be on the top of the shoulders. But there is this silly neck thing that gets in the way, and you need to give enough room for that too. If you're making your own, you can try it on and adjust the pins to drape properly on your own body type.





Then I sewed the seam by machine. I needed to be careful right at the start of the seam, because my machine wanted to suck the silk right into it.







Then I gently ironed the seam flat. (Yes, I know the silk changed color. Magic!)

And then I held my breath, and tried them on...and grinned in relief because the idea worked! I love mine!! I'm going to keep the blue one for myself. The orange one is being modeled by my daughter here, and she was very tempted to keep it for herself. But instead it is being traded for some Medieval garb for her, and I'll make her another one once I make another supply order.

And? They fold up into a nice tiny package, so they should be great for travel.

The only drawback I've found so far is that the silk will wrinkle if you scrunch down on the couch and play video games for hours while sitting on your new pretty.

So, I think it is time to make another order to Dharma Trading Company for more silk scarves. This is a creation that I am really proud of, and I can't wait to add them to my line of products. (If I calculated the time and supplies right, they should sell for about $85.) I really like the idea of 'wearable art', and would like to expand more into that area.

Silk painting with gutta

I had an opportunity this past weekend to take a class in a different style of silk painting than my usual wet-in-wet salt sprinkled fare. See, I'm involved in a historical recreation group, and one of the trends recently is to fly silk painted heraldic banners. They add so much to the atmosphere, and are lovely to behold!

The banners we did this weekend used silk scarves, black gutta, and Dynaflow dye bought from Dharma Trading Company. The class was taught by the very talented Dorothea M'Queyn. She had made us stretcher frames from pvc pipe before we got there, so we could get right down to the creative part of the fun.

Here's what we did:

Materials:
Habotai silk scarf
Dynaflow dye
pvc stretcher frame, a few inches larger around than the scarf
straight pins
rubber bands
water color or sumi brush
pencil
black gutta in a metal tip dispenser
iron
ironing cloth

Dorothea set up the frames for us. We put a straight pin diagonally in the hem in each corner of the scarf, and used the rubber bands to go around the pin and the frame to hold the scarf onto the frame by the corners. Then we went down the sides of the scarf, putting pins in the rolled hem. They lined up point to head all the way down the sides.

Then we used the rubber bands to go around the pins and the frame, stretching the scarf taut on all four sides. We would put a rubber band on one side, then do the one on the opposite side, working back and forth across the scarf to try to keep it more or less squared on the frame.

Here is a good shot of how the rubber bands worked. Once the scarf was stretched on the frame, it was time to figure out our design. You can do this part free hand, but we found it easier to pin a paper pattern underneath the silk. The silk is thin enough to be able to see through it to the pattern.

Then we lightly traced over the pattern with pencil, right on the scarf. We needed to do this very lightly, because the pencil lines might show through on the finished banner.

Then we traced over our pencil lines with the gutta. Why gutta? When you put silk dye on the silk, it spreads until it either runs out of oompf, or runs into a fence. Gutta is your fence. So when we put the gutta down, we needed to be very sure not to leave any gaps in the fence where the color could sneak free. Once we got the pattern drawn in with the gutta, we left the project to dry over night.

The next morning, Dorothea had an array of colors for us to choose from. You can use the dye straight out of the bottle or you can mix your own custom colors. (That is what the little containers were for.) She uses an eyedropper to measure the colors into the mini containers. A little dye will go a long way.

And now, it was pretty much a paint by number type of day. With some of the colors, we went over each area two or three times to get a vibrant and even coat of color.

Some of the work got very intricate.

Very, very intricate!

When the work was done, it was time to take the scarf off of the stretcher frame. Underneath the pins, there were spots that the dye hadn't been able to get to. So we went back and touched up these spots.

Once everything was dry, we ironed the scarves to set the dye. We put the scarves gutta side up, and covered them with a muslin ironing cloth. Each section got ironed for about 9 minutes. When we moved on to ironing the next section, we either flipped the cloth or got a fresh cloth, so the gutta lines wouldn't transfer to other parts of the banner. After this process, you can spill Pepsi on the banner and the dye won't run. (Yes, I know this.)

Here's how mine turned out. I'm very pleased with it! Since it is heraldry, I made my pattern 'big, bold, and butch', so you can make it out from a distance. The charges read left to right, from the higher ranking items to the lower. (Kingdom of Atenveldt populace badge, then the Barony of SunDragon populace badge, then my own heraldry, then my motto with laurel leaves denoting my highest ranking award.) I still need to sew ribbons onto one side so I can fly it. I so look forward to seeing this one fluttering in the breeze outside of my pavilion at an event!

Spinning Wheel Deals and Silk Painting

 

"Pssst.....Hey lady! Wanna buy a wheel??"

I had to laugh yesterday. See, my daughter has her own place up at college these days, and wants to set up her own studio. (Go Michelle!) She's been borrowing my Ashford Traditional spinning wheel and loves it, but I won't let her steal it entirely. (I need that here for when I model for art classes in period costume. My Kromski Sonata is a marvelous wheel, but it doesn't look like what most people think of as a spinning wheel.)

However, she is convinced that I have a Secret Super Power. I can find things. She confidently gave me her budget for a working used wheel (no more than $200), and I hunted around for awhile. I eventually made a contact on Ravelry with a lady who lived not too far away, and who had an Ashford Scholar for sale that was in my daughter's price range. So we set up a parking lot exchange, since the lovely lady with the wheel had a knitting group meeting nearby later that afternoon.

Michelle and I were giggling at the cliche of a shady parking lot deal. (Michelle says that of course it was shady! Have you ever been to Phoenix in the summer? 105F in the sunshine is waaaay too hot.) And then we met up, and Michelle was test driving the wheel before buying, and lo and behold security came driving up to see what these three suspicious looking ladies were doing with a strange contraption in his territory. I tried to explain, but he really was rather bemused. Finally I just said, "It is one of those weird parking lot deals." He shook his head, and asked if I remembered the show "Hogan's Heros". I nodded. He said, "Sgt. Schultz". I laughed and quoted, "I know nothing!" He nodded, shook his head once more, and drove off. I don't know if he ever did figure us out.

But cash exchanged hands, and Michelle is absolutely thrilled with her new spinning equipment.

In other news, I'm experimenting with the silk painting again, in two different ways. First, I have a class coming up this weekend that I'm taking on how to make Medieval style silk heraldic banners. I'm quite looking forward to that one!

Second, I decided to branch out from just making scarves, to making other types of wearable art clothing. I had an idea... If I took two large panels of silk and painted them in the same color scheme, wouldn't it be possible to sew them half way up one side and make a light weight silk ruana? I ordered a couple of larger scarves from Dharma Trading Company, and I'm giving it a try.

I painted the two panels today. The second one is currently drying on the stretcher frame. I'll let them sit for a day or so and then steam them to set the dye. Then they sit another day or so before I can wash them, iron them dry, and sew them up.

I look forward to the sewing part! I really want to try this out, and see if the pattern idea works. In my head, this will be a spectacular piece of wearable art--all colorful and fluttery and soft on the skin. But I'll need to wear it out a time or three to see how well it actually wears. I want it to stay firmly on the shoulders.

So, look for another post on this next week. I can't wait to see if this works or not!