Fiber Art

A New Direction: Tufts of Color

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My first sample of  weaving in strips of my natural dyed silks. These were dyed with avocado pits—with no mordant. I’m saving the more special ones for when I’ve made up my mind what to do next.

All these silks were dyed in the same dye pot. The only difference is that each one was a different silk fabric. When in India before the pandemic I visited a fabric store and asked to see their white silks. Then I said, “a meter of this. A meter of that” and brought home a lot of fabric. That’s how the samples got to be so big—I had so much fabric. Now I’m very happy that I have them. I photographed them all and I have 36 sets like this one –all different!

I cut apart the sample and this one is my favorite. I put in the strips in the 1/3 twill row and followed with a row of 2/2 twill between tuft rows. (one edge is plain weave before I began with the tuft rows.) I ended with more 1/3 twill. Remember twills are named with fractions: the number of shafts up on the top of the line and the number  of shafts down on the bottom. Hence 1/3 means 1 shaft up and 3 down. 2/2 is the one we might have learned to do: 2 up and 2 down.

Here’s a lose up of the 1/3 twill. The threading is a point threading.

Here is the plain weave sample. With a row of plain weave between the tuft rows.

Here you can see the weave itself. I wanted to shrink up the fabric by fulling, but the sett was so close that the yarns had no place to go to shrink. I will try felting and see if it makes any difference or is worth the bother.

Here is the yarn I’m using for warp and weft. It’s known to shrink and that’s why I chose it. I haven’t decided if I’m going to re-sley the reed and spread the warp threads farther apart. I think I’ll see what I can do with the way it is for now.  I got it at JoAnn’s!

Kay Sekimachi: A Weaver’s Influencer at 98

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This is the opening window of a beautiful show of work by Kay Sekimachi. What a smashing beginning to a gorgeous exhibition.

The second window in the exhibit gave the details. A group of textile people visited the exhibition at the San Francisco Airport in March to honor her 98th birthday. Kay lives in Berkeley, CA—our beloved neighbor and one of my teachers and an “influencer” since I began to weave.

I want everyone to notice this SAMPLER—a highlight at the beginning of the show. Here is a long, narrow piece in an art gallery! Imagine it. I was thrilled to see it right along with other art pieces.

Here is Kay at 98. More things to show in future posts. It was a wonderful day among us textile people. I was certainly with my tribe!

An Idea for Art in Kyoto and a Spectacular Shop for Dyes

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Introduction:

This post was about an idea I got for an art piece and about a spectacular dye shop in Kyoto.  Hence, I’m thinking people may be planning a trip to Japan this spring. I am going again in May!

I really liked this piece. It’s lit but what I liked is the proportion—so-o-o short and wide.

Here is the piece close.

There was a short piece in the gallery’s shop. I still like the idea. Maybe with a really nice, dyed silk fabric. That’s awfully big for me but who knows what an idea will come to.

Our guide, personally took me in a taxi to this spectacular dye shop. There are so many fabrics of all types of fibers. I bought 10th meter of many pieces. This is how I happened to have so many different fabrics in my dyed piece for China. There were dyes, all kinds of brushes, tools, equipment—I try to get there every time I’m in Kyoto.

Here I am outside the shop with my bags. I look pretty tired, and I was at the end of a long day.

I couldn’t find the shop name in English at first, but here’s the top of my bill. I bought 8, 1-meter pieces and 4 pieces less than a meter. Mostly cotton this time. I also got some interesting brushes. Take your credit card along! We Googled to get the shop’s name and address for the taxi. TANAKA NAO SENRYOTEN is the shop name!! Now you have it both in English and in Japanese for the taxi driver.

I’m Off to Japan: My Art is Going to China!

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I’m off to Japan on a tour with my precious friend and tour leader, Yoshiko Wada, founder of the World Shibori Network Foundation.

Here’s A Ring of Silks before shipping to China.

All nestled safely in a large box.

It is a large box. Off to be loaded in the car.

Waiting to be weighed and labeled. And I’m saying Goodbye!

Good News! My work got into the BoND Exhibition in Hangzhou, China

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Introduction:
In the post last June, I showed the silk swatches I dyed along with the dilemma of how to present them to enter a show in China. You can see it HERE

A Ring of Silks
I did get into the show! That means sending it to China! The title of the show is “Contemporary Art and Design Exhibition: Natural Dyes and Colors of Nations”. I assumed my pieces were the colors of old China. It will be in November at the Chinese National Silk Museum in Hangzhou, China.  My ring began as a hoola hoop!

Every piece started out as white. I used different white silks to get many shades in one dye pot. The dyes are the result of my experiments when researching old European dyes from a book, The Colorful Past. I was looking for natural dyes that might have been used in early China.

I made 48 separate dye baths for the project, each one using a different dye recipe or variation. There was a total of 720 samples.
A sack of bran, a handful of sumac, and three buckets of clear rainwater, are examples given in the old recipes. I had to estimate the size of “a handful” then estimate what weight that would be for sumac.

 I used a contemporary dye book , The Art and Science of Natural Dyes, by Boutrop and Ellis to help with the vague descriptions and proportions in the old recipes.

The Overshot Sampler Behind a Wall Hanging

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Here is the finished wall hanging that followed a very ugly sampler.

When I learned about overshot and designing for it, I wanted to try everything in my sampler. So, a different technique/design went into each of the four sections. The outside sections were similar 2-block overshot on 4 shafts.

In the section with the big X, I designed a large circle. The other middle section I designed for the optical blocks you can see further on. My other idea was to graduate the colors of the pattern wefts from dark to light—not thinking about what the yarns themselves looked like!

Here you can see both the 4-block circle and the optical circle. In 2 blocks.

Looking closely I noticed my circle wasn’t symmetrical. I had disregarded the instructions for threading turning blocks. (So that’s what turning blocks are all about!)

Progressing along with various yarns and techniques for overshot threadings, my sampler became more and more ugly.

Near the end I was just wanting to get to the end, so I tried weaving the same block over and over. I made the last section the same as the first hoping it would transform it into something nice—didn’t work!

When thinking about what my final project would be my teacher asked what my favorite part was. This repeated-one-block design was my reply. And that was enough to start me on my final design. More on that the next time.

Estate Sale Goodies: From the Estate of Barbara Shawcroft

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Introduction:
Barbara Shawcroft was a textile artist in the 60’s and onward. She collected wonderful things during her life. The sale of her things attracted the heavy-duty textile people in the Bay Area. It started at 9:00 on Friday. I went with a friend at noon. By then the rush was over and what they missed was left to be discovered. What I missed were many fabulous pieces.

This is a bag from Uzbekistan. The inside fabric is Russian and much sought after. So brilliant the colors.

Here is the bag closed. Have you ever seen red and green so nicely together? The braid trim and long tie add tiny details.

A furoshiki (Japanese wrapping cloth). I never have enough of these. The Japanese use them to carry things and wrap gifts. I have small to really big ones. What makes this one interesting is that the color in each quarter is different, so can be wrapped in different ways for different looks. This one is about a yard square.

The furoshiki opened out flat. Notice the iridescence especially in the purple quadrant. It comes from the warp and weft being different colors. This piece was woven this way with the color’s crossings in mind.

A genuine Barbara Shawcroft work. She also made huge balls and huge people. Her huge creation, “Legs” hung in one of the Embarcadero Center buildings for many years. It was originally yellow so when they took it down it was pretty dirty and discolored. My ball is about 18” in diameter. The more I ponder it, the happier I am that the early mob left it behind.

A simple basket that is quite lovely.

 A short Japanese kimono (Haori jacket?). The stencil printed sleeves are a beautiful addition to the blue and white kasuri pattern. All cotton. Very wearable.

I think this was a futon cover. It is made of double ikat squares and stenciled squares. A find.

A close-up of the futon cover. Perfection!

Much More Inspiration at the Kay Sekimachi Show, BAMPH, Berkeley, Calif. (ends October 24, 2021)

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Introduction:
This is my 4th post about the work of Kay Sekimachi. The others were on June 21, 2021, September 16, 2014, and September 17, 2014. On July 30, I paid my third visit to the exhibition, and I have another one scheduled.  The Textile Arts Council of the DeYoung Museum organized a visit to the show with Kay there to answer questions and receive our adoration.

In the June post, I showed what caught my eye at first. This time here are more subtle pieces that inspire me.

Aka/Kuro II, 2007. Polyester, linen; plain and twill weaves, painted warp, wood dowels, gesso. 38.75” x 5.5”.  Kay calls this one of her scrolls. She has more on the loom at the moment but hasn’t gotten to it in a while. It is stunningly gorgeous and simple.

Detail of above.

Rouge et Noir, 2007. Linen, dye, and lucite. 28 ¾ » x 6 ¾”.

Detail. I love the red at the corner.

Another detail. Notice the care taken at the hem.

Homage to Agnes Martin. Approx.. 12” x 12”. Linen, textile dye, permanent marker. There are several of these pieces. This time I really noticed the subtleties in the painting.

Notice the care in presentation. The linen is stretched over a board and framed with a reveal. There are several of these variations in the show.

Another detail of the frame and more subtilties.

A Weaver’s Weaver: Kay Sekimachi

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I love this box. One day when I was naïve and in a workshop with Kay Sekimachi, she told us how she wove it. Now it is in a fantastic solo show, and I want to weave it. I must not have thought it was very tricky at the time, because I cannot find her instructions.

The top and bottom add to the mystery. We know she had 8 shafts.

Also in the exhibition is this book. Looks simple. Maybe it is and maybe not. It needs some thinking about.

She made several of these “books” and I have one. This is a painting that she did that she transferred to the warp for the design for a book similar to mine.

Another box with another treatment for the top.

Another box which looks like warp ikat. I think maybe she transferred the black onto the warp rather than regular ikat. Similar to the books.

There are several of these magnificent beauties in the show. This is called Amiyose III. To get the black monofilament, Kay used Rit dye. I’ve gone twice with weavers and there is a lot to ponder and wonder about.

Details:
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) ends October 24. Don’t miss it! Plan a trip to San Francisco and take a day in Berkeley. $10 each. Reservations required AHEAD OF TIME.

Blue Descending a Staircase: From One Layer to Nine – Woven by Peggy Osterkamp

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Introduction:
I’m thinking of posting interesting double woven pieces for some future posts. Interspersed might be my dye project progress. I feel swamped thinking about the June 16 deadline.

I wove this piece quite a few years ago out of cotton sewing thread. It began at the top with weaving the warp in a single layer. Then I opened it up to 3 layers, then to 2 layers. Then I decided to make as many layers as I could given the width and density of the warp. This was based on the idea of weaving double weave like a “Kleenex box” with an opening in the center of the warp and the edges like the edges of a tube.

Here is what the warp looked like when woven as a single layer. I put the red stripe in so I would know where the opening would be.

My Own Fine Weaving

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Introduction:
Now that life is getting busier, I’m planning to post less often. Maybe weekly or so. I want to get to my looms and experiment and do some fine weaving again. And I have a dye project I want to start. If you still need something to have breakfast with, try reading the posts I began a year ago when the pandemic began. I still love getting comments.

This is my 125 ends per inch silk weaving. I had big plans, but it was almost a “dog on the loom”. I wanted sheer fabric and I didn’t want to beat in the wefts too hard. I wove a double weave tube so there would be more resistance on the beater to prevent beating too hard and still be sheer. A tube meant only one shuttle, of course. I made so many threading errors, I thought I had lost my mind! It’s really not hard to thread so many ends when the cross is right there to guide you. Sometimes I crossed threads and sometimes it was in the heddles. I already had made several fine silk tubes before at 96 epi. This shouldn’t have been so difficult. I’ve got more  fine silk threads from Junco Sato Pollack so am eager to weave them up.

The weaving went terribly with a huge number of stops and starts to correct broken or mis-threaded ends. I properly repaired many threads and replaced many warp threads with colored sewing threads so I could see what I was doing. I had to throw away a lot but managed to get 40” woven as a tube.

After the 40” I decided to just weave off what I had left and not bother with corrections. I managed to get a hanging out of it. It hangs in front of an ikat hanging I got in Okinawa.

In the end, I gave up weaving the sheer cloth and decided to just weave off whatever I had left of the warp. Probably the warp was on the loom a few months before I made up my mind to get it off. I wove the layers separately.

I used the handspun cotton from Bhutan for the weft.

I couldn’t snug up the wefts at the selvedges so just let the wefts all hang out.

The handspun cotton on the fine silk. I think it looks OK. I do like where the cloth splits into the two layers and divides to hang on either side of the “single layer” the tube.

Scrolls Project Ending!

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Introduction:

I began making scrolls a year ago. Now I’ve made 55 or more scrolls in four collections. The first was dyed linens, the other three about putting texties together. The first two collections were in two shows in the gallery where I live. The last two groups I’m photographing now and are in this and some future posts. I must admit everything in the last half of the project has its art pinned onto the background fabrics! It’s like they are the first drafts to me.

This is a shibori hankie I dyed and gave as gifts on one of my trips to Japan. One man immediately put it in his shirt pocket which was fun. The background is a piece of a kimono found at a flea market in Japan. The narrow width tells us it was part of the collar/borders on the front. It is precisely done double ikat. That’s why the pieces were saved.

I folded the cloth then wrapped it on a pole for the resist. It was then dyed in indigo. The folding I did after taking a workshop in shadow folds with Chris Palmer at Slow Fiber Studios in Berkeley. I used silk handkerchiefs from Dharma Trading Co.

I wove the background with a deflected double weave recipe some of my weaving friends were doing. It’s from the book, Double Weave with a Twist. The square you may remember from a Chines boutique. I love the stitching, so this is a way for me to get to enjoy it rather than have it stuck in a drawer or under a mug.

This shows the stitched piece. There are layers of cloth. Ms. He Haiyan, in her boutiques in Beijing and Shanghai, uses scraps for lots of lovely projects and keeps her sewers busy. You may remember the post, “More Ideas for Projects” November 15, 2020.

1. I did the shibori
2. I dyed the background black walnuts
3. Close up of bag on previous scroll. I love it. The squares are the skins of cocoons from tent worms or something similar from Japan. I also have an obi made of them. And a collection of them framed.
4. I dyed the scarf. The purple is an old piece. The dye precious.

Both are felt pieces I made on cloths with heavy indigo coating (I think).

This is another felt piece on the indigo background. By mistake I ironed on the fusible lining on the front side late last night. I quick went to th internet for how to get it off. Steam and a press cloth. I was desperate. It didn’t come off but I decided it was interesting with the press cloth wrinkled up when I pulled it off. Thank goodness I was using a scrap of the interfacing so some of the original pattern of the indigo coated cloth was still visible. Whew!! If I had more cloth I might try it again. Or on something else. How ideas are born I guess.

Playing with Light: Now You See It; Now You Don’t

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Playing with warp wise and weft wise orientation

Introduction:
I began this project maybe 1 ½ years ago. Had the inspiration, almost finished it. Then it got buried on my worktable. I had just gotten my 12-shaft dobby from my dear friend, Jan Langdon, before she died of ALS. I wanted to use all the shafts to make a 12-shaft satin. Then I wanted to gradually in steps go from weft face satin to warp face. That would be 1/11 (1shaft up and 11 down=warp face on one side and weft face on the other) to 2/10, to 3/9, to 4/8, etc. ending with 11/1 (11 shafts up and 1 down). It was interesting but didn’t turn out to be attractive. I’d been playing with dyed silks, cutting squares and playing with how the light affected them whether they were oriented with the warp direction up or turned 90 degrees. So I decided to cut up my fabric into squares and see what I could do.

Depending on how you look at this, the border is darker or lighter. I put the warp faced squares on the border with the warp going horizontally. All the middle squares were oriented with warp wise going vertically.

Here the same piece when I walked to the other side of it to take the picture.

These were on white warp working sequentially from weft face to warp face. I started with canvases I bought at an art supply store. They are 16” x 20”. I covered them with a gray linen that I had. I do love the surface of a nice linen.

I couldn’t bear to throw out the scraps! For a long time I’ve toyed with the idea of making a mosaic out of small pieces.

Now my dilemma: what shall I do with the leftover squares?

Before cutting anything, I ironed this double stick adhesive on the back. Then I cut the strips using a rotary cutter, and finally cut the strips into squares. To adhere them to the backing, you pull off the paper backing to expose the adhesive and iron the pieces down.