Silk ties in action: Copper Canyon HS Acapella Singers

I'm working on a project right now...but I'll have to wait until after Christmas to show you all. In the meantime, here is a shot of the Copper Canyon H.S. Acapella Singers. They were caroling this evening, and did a wonderful job of it.

Why am I showing you this in my crafting blog? Because the three gentlemen up there in the back are sporting my hand painted silk ties. Aren't they dashing?

I told them that if they got to wear the ties, they had to model them for me. They all took their best GQ model poses...and then broke out laughing an instant after I snapped the shot. But I got them!

Oh...that tall one in the middle there? That would be my son. Yup. I'm an evil mother, torturing her teen by taking pictures of him all dressed up, and posting them on the internet.

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.

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.

Silk ties back from the dry cleaners

The first batch of hand painted silk ties is back from the dry cleaners!

I managed to get these four photographed and up in the Etsy shop, at tangibledaydreams.etsy.com . I've got three more here waiting to be processed, and hopefully I can get those up tomorrow. The second batch of 18 ties is still at the dry cleaners. I get to pick those up on Friday, so look for them to magically appear in the shop sometime next week.

I wish I wore ties now. I'm really tickled by the way these turned out.

More silk ties, and being linked to by Interweave Press

Huh. A bit of meta blog stuff here for a moment... I use http://sitemeter.com/ to keep track of statistics for this blog, mostly because I'm kind of curious about such things. I know that not everyone who pokes their nose in here leaves comments, so I like to look at the foot prints instead. Well, recently there was a sudden surge of folks looking at an old post I made about the Medieval box loom that I picked up at last year's Estrella War.
( http://tangibledaydreams.blogspot.com/2010/02/medieval-box-loom.html ). Turns out it was linked to in Interweave Press's July 13 issue of 'Weaving Today'. ( http://e1.interweave.com/dm?id=236E95069D8B4FD0A721392A3AF9E7B4C30092B14F2F2183 . )

So cool! I'm kind of bemused over here. No, strike that. I'm very bemused over here. I subscribe to their 'Handwoven' magazine, and get 'Weaving Today' sent to my email. I just hadn't had time to read this particular issue closely, and click through on all the links. Seems other folks did!

In other news, I'm back in the studio painting some more ties. I did some more of the cool squiggle pattern ones...

And then also tried some stripes.

Yes, they're all actually the same 3" width. They look different because I was taking the picture at a weird angle, trying to get around the ironing board. That is set up so I can iron and heat set these babies once they dry for awhile, but it is kind of in the way in the mean time.

I personally like the squiggles better, but the stripes are cool enough that I may do some more of those as well, just to add variety to the options.

What do you think?

Hand painted silk ties

Last time I made a post about hand painting silk ties (http://tangibledaydreams.blogspot.com/2011/06/silk-ties-product-development.html) I was trying to decide which method of dyeing was going to work the best. On the one hand, I could deconstruct the tie, dye it, iron it, and sew it back together. This had the benefit of keeping the interfacing dry, but it was difficult to line the fabric back up correctly after dyeing. On the other hand, I could just dye the tie whole. However, the edges were a little wavy with this method.

I had an idea though. I needed to see if the dyes were going to stand up to the dry cleaning process, so I sent the tie that I had dyed in one piece to the cleaners. When it came back, the colors were as intense as they started out, so the dye passed the cleaning test. Also, the dry cleaning process evened out the edges of the tie, to the point that nobody else could tell that there had been an issue.

I decided that the extra $2.50 for dry cleaning a tie was definitely better than taking my time to deconstruct and re-sew the danged things. I don't like hand sewing, you see. I just want to play with the colors!

So, I got two dozen more scarf blanks. Yesterday I started dyeing. I'm pleased with the way they're coming out so far!

I have several more to make, and they all will need to be ironed and dry cleaned. But look for them in the Etsy shop (tangibledaydreams.etsy.com) in a few weeks.

Silk Ties: product development

I've been working with my prototype silk ties again, trying to find the best method of dyeing them. I'm using silk tie blanks from Dharma Trading Company, and their Setasilk silk paints. (See this entry: http://tangibledaydreams.blogspot.com/2011/06/silk-ties-attempt-numbers-2-and-3.html)

The tie on the left was disassembled prior to dyeing, and the interfacing was taken out. Then, after dyeing, I sewed it back together. The silk is cut on the bias, and it stretched a bit out of shape in the whole process, so I had a hard time getting the ends to line back up again.

The tie on the right was dyed all together, which made it easier to get the pattern in the right place. However, the edges ended up kind of wavy in the dyeing process.

I wanted to make sure that the dyes could stand up to cleaning, so I sent the blue tie to the dry cleaners. The picture above is taken after it got back. If you look at both ties, you can see that there isn't any noticeable fading of color intensity after cleaning. And on the plus side, most of the waviness seems to have evened itself back out.

I'm going to have my husband test drive both ties, to see which method of dyeing gives the most wearable result. But right now, I'm leaning toward dyeing them all together, and then running each one through the dry cleaners before putting them up in the Etsy shop. I've almost got a salable product!

Silk ties: using Setasilk instead of Dye-na-flow

Back in May, I made an attempt to hand paint a silk tie from Dharma Trading Company. I used their Dye-na-flow silk paints, and was only somewhat pleased with the result.

I was going for the dramatic organic shapes that I had been getting on my silk scarves, but this type of silk paint didn't seem to react as well to the salt technique. So, the next time I ordered scarf blanks I decided to try out a different type of silk paint. It came in, and today I've been giving it a try.

Here is the Setasilk that I decided to try, as well as the tie blank, the silk salt, and my sumi brush and watercolor tray.

For this try, I first spritzed down the back of the tie with water, so the colors would run together. Then I painted the back of the tie.

When I flipped the tie over to do the front, some of the dye from the back had run around the edges.

I spritzed the front with water, and painted it. Since the Dye-na-flow gave disappointing results with the silk salt, I really salted this one down. I also noticed that there were some lines where the dye from the back had come around front, so I added more salt to those parts to try to blend them in.

Boy, does this dye react with the salt!! Much more so than I expected. Kind of a cool effect, but a little over the top.

Also, those lines at the edge of the tie never blended in. Hmmm...

So, I tried it again. This time I spritzed the front of the tie with water before doing the back, so the paint wouldn't hit a dry edge as it came around. I also used much less salt.

The results were much, much better. I ironed the tie to heat set the paint by sandwiching the tie between a pressing cloth. Each section was ironed for 3 minutes.

Ah ha! That was the result I was going for!! Vivid colors, blending together, with the salt pulling the paint into interesting, organic shapes. I'd call this a success...but...

...there is still a problem. Even after ironing the heck out if it, the tie won't lie down flat. The edges have gone wavy. I'm suspecting that the issue is that interfacing didn't like getting soaked in the painting process.

So, attempt #4 is going to involve deconstructing the tie before the painting process, and then sewing it back together again afterward.


I'll get this yet! Has anyone else experimented with painting silk ties with the salt technique? Any pointers? Am I on the right track?

EDIT: Taking it apart, dying, ironing, and re-sewing seems to work. I'll make another blog post on that once I see how this tie fares at the dry cleaners.

EDIT 2: Dry cleaning the ties seems to solve the wavy issues I was having, without having to deconstruct the tie. Success!