Weaverly

Black and White

Saturday afternoon we drove through a rain squall and into a mostly sunny afternoon in Ashville for a look at the Southern Highland Guild members' show, Black & White III. This is an all-media show, and it is a blockbuster. If you're anywhere within striking distance of Asheville, you should see it. Full disclosure - I do have a woven hanging included.

Unfortunately there is no photography permitted in the galleries, and there is no catalog, but at the risk of omitting some really terrific work, I'll just highlight my fave woven work, and leave the jewelry, ceramics, art quilts, dolls, furniture, metal, books, etc., for others to describe.

Teena Tuenge's String of Squares is an inventive series of face-like images in double weave blocks. Her mastery of block combinations is impressive. Amy Putansu's White Birch, a panel of hand dyed silk woven with an ondulé reed, has its flowing transparent curves effectively displayed in the center of the gallery space. Catherine Ellis's woven shibori, Sculpting the Shape of the Hills, is an impressionist large-scale landscape image, of deceptively simple appearance. A silk and merino scarf, Within the Fold, by Jo-Marie Karst, features differential of shrinkage in very large blocks, with exaggerated ruffling edges. Interchange of pattern and ground in the separate zones of Barbara Miller's Overshot in Black and White is lively and intriguing. After following the progress of Tommye Scanlin's Gray Dawn on her blog for several months, it is wonderful to see this monumental work in person. Brava, Tommye! I know I've left out many other fine pieces, but you'll just have to see the show for yourselves. I'll close this brief survey by saying that Kathy Roig's Shadows, a broken twill hanging with painted warp, executed on a drawloom, really blew me away. It is impossible to tell where dyeing leaves off and structure begins, a wonderful piece that rewards repeated viewing, from both up close and afar.

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This morning as I went for my walk, I heard a raucous honking, and when I looked up I saw eleven geese close overhead flying in perfect vee formation. It was that quintessential autumn image. By the time I got the phone out of my pocket, they were long past. But several blocks later, I spotted them in back of the Lutheran church, taking a rest stop (Or perhaps they are staying over here for the winter? Do geese have a religious preference?).

 

 

A Video, and Some Further Samples

A big thank you to Margreet, who posted a link to this extraordinary video about the late Frans Dijkmeijer. The final section is a rapid survey (very rapid!) of some of his woven designs, and it's like a mini weaving class. Dijkmeijer's observation about the development of woven crepes was especially interesting to me. 

Still eking out a few last samples on the dark warp before the bitter end. First a few stabs at liseré:

…and finally, a combination of two granite weaves:

I'm now resleying this old warp from 36 epi to 44 epi, before I beam a new warp to tie on. 

Meanwhile, a brief visit, and the inevitable record:

Working Out the What Ifs

The dobby loom is now rethreaded to straight draw. It will never have another change in threading (she says grandly). There's just enough left on the current mixed, mainly dark warp (20/2 and 20/2 cottons at 36 epi) for a bit of sampling before I tie on the next (straight) warp. 

So here's a try of the crackle draft I was working on a few days ago. This is a simulation of a threading that could be woven on 4 shafts, here adapted to the 40-shaft straight draw. Click to enlarge.

There is one pattern weft (orange 5/2 cotton) and two 20/2 ground wefts (black and yellow). All I can say is: it works. Would I want to weave a lot of this fabric on this loom? Probably not. The chief satisfaction in working out this draft is just the challenge of seeing if it could be done. That's my favorite weaving activity: working out the What Ifs. 

First Explorations in Liseré

At Jette Vandermeiden's lecture on Lampas at the Complex Weavers Seminars a few weeks ago, I was introduced to this book, Royal Silks, by Zetterström and Ekstrand:

I've finally procured my own copy, and it is a wonder! It's a compendium of fabrics from the Royal Armory in Stockholm, and contains analyses of lampas fabrics, and a number of other interesting structures as well. It would be a good resource for the jacquard weaver, the drawloom weaver, and the advanced shaft loom weaver. 

One fabric that caught my eye was on page 62, the mourning banner for princes Gustav and Carl Gustav, circa 1680. The structure is called liseré, one I've never tried before. It has a single warp and a single weft; the weft interlaces sometimes in 8-end warp satin (ground); in addition odd wefts float sometimes in a 3/1 twill bound by every sixth satin thread, and even wefts float sometimes in basket weave. It's like a multitasking weft! Intriguing. Here's what the Pattern Presets might look like in Photoshop; first is the ground, then Pattern 1, then Pattern 2. I'm looking forward to trying this out.

I have two naked looms at the moment; I'm working on remedying that situation. I'm not sure if the liseré explorations will be jacquard or dobby. If dobby, I'll have to rework the structure to repeat on a factor of 40 for the 40-shaft loom; at present it repeats on 24 warps. 

 

Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner

These photos from the past several days seem to have grouped themselves into a mealtime theme. First, here's one from breakfast on Sunday. I had just eaten some grapes, and the overhead light shed an interest shadow on the stems left on the plate:

The next photo was taken during Saturday lunch at an outdoor cafe in Asheville, North Carolina. I tried to keep the flowers in focus and the people out of focus, by using a relatively wide aperture:

Interestingly, Bruce was inspired to take a similar picture, but his viewpoint is more inclusive (picture credit Bruce Schlein, by permission):

And finally, the dinner picture (you knew this was coming, didn't you?). I took this one yesterday in Greenville, at Art in the Park. We had just passed a restaurant that was preparing to open for the evening meal, and I caught the festival reflections from the bridge in the plate glass, with the waitstaff inside setting the tables:

Second Try

Now let's try that again. I should have thought of this one first.

Here's a simple crackle threading for four shafts, each block repeated just once. It repeats neatly on 20 ends, and we can just double it for a 40-end simulation on a straight threading. You may recognize this as an advancing point twill:

Here it is woven as classic crackle on 4 shafts (ground x, Patern, ground y, Pattern); first, the structure drawdown, then with color:

Now here's the 40-shaft version:

Here's another block treadling, 4-shaft version:

And here's the 40-shaft version:

This concludes my ramblings on crackle simulations for 40 shafts. I'll revisit this topic after I get something onto the loom.

Oops

I've deleted the post originally scheduled for today, because I discovered multiple errors in it. Bad doggie. Apologies all around. 

Another Crackle on 40

Here's another crackle design adapted to a straight draw on 40 shafts. First the 4-shaft version, a simple sequence of various sizes of short blocks A, B, C, D. This one's woven as classic crackle, with two different grounds (all the other crackle treadlings could be woven on it, too):

Now the same cloth on 40 shaft straight threading (click to enlarage):

And the WIF:

Download 4block40shaft

Crackle on 40???

Susan Wilson's excellent seminar about crackle weave at CW was a real eye-opener for me. She achieves complex multi-toned structures on four shafts, and she clearly believes "less is more." She points out, and rightly so, that this weave structure does not necessarily improve when more shafts are used, and that the larger scale motifs on multi-shaft crackles are not always desirable. Her book, Weave Classic Crackle & More, is well worth careful study, and it is a beautifully organized and produced book as well. Highly recommended.

In a chat with Lynn Smetko (talented weaver and editor of the CW Journal) after Susan's seminar, we were wondering about simulating a 4-shaft crackle threading on a straight draw on a 40-shaft loom. Some 40-shaft weavers like to keep a straight threading on their looms (and who can blame us? Rethreading such a deep loom is a back-breaker). I gave this question serious thought.

The crackle design would have to have a threading repeat that numbered exactly 40 or some factor of 40. What I came up with is a 40-end threading that combines blocks A and C (using Susan's terminology). There is an incidental after two repeats of each block, and also an extra incidental for skipping blocks B and D. Here's the 4-shaft version:

Now here's what I came up with for 40 shafts (click to enlarge & see the threads more clearly):

It's exactly the same structurally as the 4-shaft version, but weavable on the 40-shaft dobby loom. This warp is striped, by the way. If I were to make the warp solid black, which is exactly what I am about to put on my loom, it would look something like this (again, click to embiggen):

Is all this worth doing, when the cloth could easily be woven on 4 shafts? I think so! The more things I can do with my straight threading, the happier this weaver will be.

Here's the wif file for the 40-shaft version, in case anyone's interested. Send me pictures.

Download 40shaftcracklesimulation 

 

The Serendipity of the Peach

On the way home from Washington, I snapped this from the car window as we passed the famous Gaffney peach, on Intersate 85 east of Spartanburg:

Then this morning in a waiting room, there was this upholstery:

Don't you just love it when that happens :-)

Click this last one to enlarge; it's a really interesting structure. I haven't quite figured it out yet, but I salute the designer, whoever she is.