Moiré

More Moiré: With Two Layers

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Introduction:
The posts are fewer than usual because I’m up to my ears working on my sale which will be November 19 & 20 at Fort Mason in San Francisco. A preliminary sale will be on November 12 at St. Mary’s Cathedral in San Francisco. Get there for the first look!

 The last blog was about making moiré by pressing two cloths to make the “watered” look. In this post, I bring up again about making moiré by weaving and other ways of having two layers on top of each other. See my previous post from June 20, 2022, for more on two layer moiré. SEE HERE.

Recently I found three small scraps of fine silk warp woven in double weave. When I held them up in the air, voila! Moiré. It is about 10” long. The warp was about 3 ½” wide. If I put it on a flat surface, the moiré would disappear and you would only see plain weave.

The second little scrap. This one is 8 ½” tall not including the fringe.

The third one is 6” long. I did a little black ink on it but if you put it on a flat surface, all you would see is plain weave plus the ink places. The moiré depends entirely on the two layers. Don’t forget to look at the previous post. SEE HERE

Uzbekistan Part Four: Getting Moiré or a Watered Look

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Introduction:
Watered : Term used to describe textiles in which a rippled or watered effect is produced by pressing certain ribbed fabrics in such a way as to flatten parts of the ribs and leave the rest in relief. The flattened and un-flattened parts reflect the light differently. Synonym: Moire 
From my go-to book, Warp & Weft by Dorothy Burnham.

This is the watered look or moiré on one of the pieces I brought back from Uzbekistan.

Here are the huge rollers that press the fabric to make the moire.

The first step is wetting the fabric.

The cloth is doubled before going into the rollers as per the definition above in the introduction.

The cloth is fed into the rollers.

The double cloth is separated.

The cloth is dried.

Moire can be on plain cloth, too.

A special piece I found was still doubled and here you can see it being separated. The moire is on both cloths but it took the two of them to press on each other to make the watered look (moire). I was thrilled when I found my photos and the fabrics I brought home. And now they will be in my sale. I hope lots of people will come: there will be interesting stuff as well as museum quality things and my own work. It’s a big deal for me. November 19 & 20 at Fort Mason in San Francisco. The reason for the sale is that I’m downsizing and want to pass my treasures out into the world and see the people who they go to.

Making Art with Moiré

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I’ve been intrigued about moiré for many years. I ran across some samples and when I picked them up and saw light behind, I immediately saw wonderful moire patterns. Voila! These double weave tubes produced moire if seen backlit but only then. This photo shows that two layers superimposed can or cannot make moire, depending on the set up. I put a card behind a portion of the piece to show how it looked lying on a table and hanging with light behind it.

Here is the same piece as a little hanging.  Art!

Another little moire piece I discovered and made into a little hanging.

A third scrap turned into a hanging just by hanging it up.

Here is one of my original pieces where I discovered moire.

Moire sometimes isn’t desirable. This is part of an illustration in my book Weaving for Beginners in the Rigid Heddle chapter. Again, 2 layers superimposed can cause the moire effect. Perhaps you’ve seen in when 2 screens are next to each other.

This photo is from my go-to book for textile definitions. For moire it said, “see Watered”. The definition: “Term used to describe textiles in which a rippled or watered effect is produced by pressing certain ribbed fabrics in such a way as to flatten parts of the ribs and leave the rest in relief. The flattened and unflattened parts reflect the light differently. Synonym: moire”. From Warp & Weft A Dictionary of Textile Terms. Dorothy K. Burnham. Royal Ontario Museum, 1981. Now that I think of it, I think I had some fabrics like that from Uzbekestan, and we went to see the big callerending machine that pressed the ridges.