« December 2012 | Main | February 2013 »
Bonnie made an excellent suggestion to turn the waves design vertically. I tried it, and it does look better this way. Here are two versions, the first in twill at 40 ends & 44 picks repeat, and the second in satin, at 45 picks repeat. Click to enlarge.
I'll try weaving the satin version, and you'll be the first to see it.
The matte acrylic coating on last week's lampas is dry. I cut out three book covers and then added a narrow ribbon of acrylic medium to the edges on the right sides. This will control the raveling. Here are the covers set out to dry once more.
In this closeup you can barely see the acrylic coating on the edges. When it's dry, I'll be able to trim the "fuzzies" for a clean edge.
Next step: glueing a reinforcement strip on the inside spine area.
This morning we had the pleasure of visiting Terry at the Fine Arts Center, where she is doing a two week residency in conjunction with her exhibition there. Read more about it at her blog.
Her art, which involves dyeing, fabric compositions, and stitching, is beautifully displayed in the Sheffield Wood gallery at the FAC, and Terry has set up an actual studio there where students can watch her at work and engage in the process.
Here's a look at some of Terry"s work in the gallery, with Terry at the far right:
She showed us parts of a work in progress, mark making with charcoal and textile medium.
Terry's beautiful exhibition will be available for viewing during school hours at the FAC until March 22. It is a must see.
Of course I couldn't resist giving it a try, with mixed results. On 40 shafts, there's barely enough room to delineate the curves from yesterday's photo. I did a good bit of tweaking, and tried it with broken twill, my go-to weave for small designs. Disappointing. Then with straight twill. A little better.
I did try reducing it to 24 shafts. A washout.
Before yesterday's symphony concert at the Peace Center, we were waiting in the lobby and saw this interesting pattern on the side of the bar.
Wouldn't this make a great repeat pattern for a dobby loom? In satin, maybe, or broken twill? Or granite?
Some more design time on the bamboo piece. First I adjusted the aspect ratio of the file—it was weaving at 81% ppi compared to epi. Then I worked on the selvedges. The 1/7 satin selvedges were way too prominent, and worse, they curled towards the front. I changed them to 7/1 satin, and not only did they then recede visually, but they curled slightly to the back, a good effect. I think now I'm ready to stop fiddling and get on with it.
The dobby samples I showed you yesterday were constructed of 8-end granites, which can be used on any shaft loom with a multiple of 8 shafts: 8, 16, 24, 32, 40, etc; my actual samples were on 40 shafts. Today's samples are constructed of 16-end granites, interleaved with a second granite in a weft-backed construction. To read more about weft-backed weaves, take a look at Chapter 11 of The Woven Pixel (see sidebar).
Here's the back story on these samples: I'm doing a piece for an exhibition featuring bamboo, and I wanted to weave it on the TC-1 (jacquard). I thought it would be fun to experiment with granite weaves and use some of my stash of bamboo yarn. As I am not limited to number of shafts in this case, I put together a series of 16-end granites, plugged them into my design, and sampled with several combinations of bamboo and other yarns. The warp is black 20/2 cotton, and all the samples use two wefts.
Reading the samples from bottom to top, the first weft pair is beige silk noil and moss green bamboo; the second is pinkish rayon bouclé and off-white bamboo; and the third is gray cotton marl and off-white bamboo.
I'll probably weave more samples over the weekend (as long as we don't lose power!). I'm loving granite.
I've washed the five granite samples from last week and scanned them, right side and wrong side (RS & WS). There is really no right and wrong, it's just a way of identifying them Click to enlarge.
First, Bigdotz1, RS and WS:
Bigdotz3, RS and WS:
Bigdotz4, RS and WS:
Bigdotz5, RS and WS:
The weave structures used in these samples repeat in an 8x8 matrix. If you're interested in seeing the dobby drafts, here are the wifs:
Download Bigdotz1Download Bigdotz2 Download Bigdotz3 Download Bigdotz4 Download Bigdotz5
Feel free to use these in your own weaving, with attribution. Please do not publish or otherwise distribute these drafts without prior permission.
This morning outside my studio door:
It almost makes me forget about a misbehaving heddle on my dobby loom. Just one heddle, not the entire shaft! How can that be? The warp end isn't loose, the eye of the heddle isn't damaged, the end goes through the eye correctly…and strangest of all, the previous projects on this warp were error-free. A puzzle.
After mucking out the studio a little (not too much, just enough to get access to some table tops), I spread out a few old lampas pieces and coated the backs with glop, aka acrylic matte medium. When these dry, I will cut them up and use them as covers for longstitch books. There might be enough here for five or six books.