Velvet

The Start of 2021

by

New Year’s Day.
14” x 23”
Background:
Commercial cotton I dyed in indigo.
Center: Silk Velvet I got in Italy from the weavers.
This piece represents my hope for the new year for me. Simple, clear, and calm; but interesting.

The original idea was to turn the nap of the white velvet 90 degrees to make the border show. If one stands at exactly this spot you can see it. The velvet pile is so short there is almost no difference in the direction of the nap.

You can see I didn’t catch that one square was turned the wrong way when I put it together. It only shows up when you stand in that certain place. When I was working on it, I kept trying to get them all lined up correctly.

I bought this small piece of white velvet and loved it because it was so silky-soft, but I could never find a way to use it. I think cutting it into squares helped make it more than just a scrap. I’m glad I didn’t lose it! I chose the blue velvet because it looked contemporary to me. I used every millimeter I had.

Front-on, no pattern can be seen.

A Project Finished Four Months Later

by

Finally after beginning with the idea 4 months ago, this velvet piece is finished! In April when my posts were about velvet fragments I brought back from Italy, I was working on how to mount this piece I loved to be a scroll. I didn’t want a hem at the bottom. (I liked the cut edge.) I ended up using a product similar to “Fray-chek”. I got “Aleene’s Original Stop Fraying” on Amazon. It’s amazing what can be gotten online when one can’t get to JoAnn’s.

The piece hung in my hallway for months clipped onto a yard stick with clothes pins. I didn’t want a hem so knew a regular stick couldn’t work. Finally, it dawned on me to use a beautiful piece of black bamboo. I’ve used it quite a bit and have a “goodly” amount of it in my stash. I think it’s perfect. Then I used mono filament from the bamboo to hang it.

The background fabric is the gazar silk I first posted about in April. Here is a repeat of a photo of it hanging off my ironing board that shows its body and sheerness. You may remember how I struggled to iron it perfectly. I wanted the background to be perfectly flat—like a scroll. I have had to accept some little puckers. I am realizing that a normal scroll is backed with paper so it can be absolutely flat and a textile is what it is: beautiful, but not paper.

Velvet Revisited

by

Introduction:
I have been looking at fabrics lying on my table and around that I’ve pulled out for possible scrolls. A few are coming together now after “marinating” awhile. Here are the results from my velvet pieces.

The previous version using this lovely little piece of velvet just never looked right. Now, the background is a piece of cotton I dyed with indigo. (I work at it to make my dyed things mottled.) Then, I pulled out the silk also dyed with indigo to check the color. (I often like to leave the wrinkles in just like I like the colors to be mottled.) When I threw it across the piece I knew that was it!


I adored this white velvet I brought back from Italy. It was exceptionally soft. What to do with a piece about 4” x 6”?? I decided to cut it into squares and mount them like a mosaic. I spent a lot of time working with the nap so the border would stand out from the center. Since the nap was so short, the pieces all look pretty much alike. The blue velvet that I cut up for the borders was about 6” x 3”. The nap is different on the top and bottom but doesn’t show up.


While fiddling with this piece, I noticed that the velvet was much lighter in a certain light.

Looking at it from another angle, the velvet turned dark. That’s what I had been working toward in the white and blue piece!

Look What I Found Waiting for Attention!

by

I am working on unfinished projects while staying home. I have a lot of work ahead to “mine”. So far, I’m happily keeping busy and staying well. I get to see people on my hall and on walks in our gardens outside the building so am not lonesome. I sure hope our isolation is effective.

Years ago I went on a trip to Italy to visit velvet weavers. It was a wonderful experience visiting so many wonderful places in Italy as well. Velvets are very expensive so it wasn’t easy to bring home pieces. Occasionally we had an opportunity to purchase some scraps. This little piece is 7 ½” x 4” but I love it and am thinking of mounting it so I can have it out to enjoy. The velvets were costly because of all the silk pile threads in the warps. They always were woven on jacquard looms.

Look closely and you can see the tiny cut velvet threads.

This tiny sample is 1” x 1” and has a lot to see. Some areas are “regular velvet” meaning the woven loops are cut. Other areas you can see where the loops were uncut. In the areas where there is no velvet showing on the right side, all the velvet warps are woven into the ground weave. These areas are called voided velvet. So, in this piece we have cut, uncut, and voided velvet.

A few of us were given a chance to weave on a jacquard velvet loom and this is my part of the piece we wove. There wasn’t enough time to even think about cutting the loops. This piece measures 3” x 3 ¼” and I treasure it. How nice to find it again.

Here is the place where we were able to learn how the jacquard loom works and to punch our cards for the pattern above that we wove. We lived on the little campus during the 2 or 3-day workshop.

I brought home this big piece because there is an error in the weaving and couldn’t be sold at full price. I chose it because there was so much voided area which meant that the dark magenta velvet threads were carried along in the foundation invisibly. It is 20” long and 25” high. Can you see the error very close to the bottom?

Here is the error. I love it. It shows the evidence of the weaver (or a glitch in the jacquard mechanism).

Here is the wrong side. I had it framed with plexi on the front and back to remind me that all those dark threads were carried on the back and invisible on the front.

To Zoagli (the Italian Riviera, I think)

by

Zoagli 1Today we traveled north along the coast up to south of Genoa to the tiny town of Zoagli where we will see some velvet weaving tomorrow. This first picture is of the town and entrance to the Zoagli Hotel where we are staying, over looking the water. Our train passed the lovely little villages of the Cinque Terre (5 villages) where I will come at the end Zoagli 2of the trip.

 [click photos to enlarge]

Here is the patio off my room and the view of the Mediterranean.

The next two pictures are from Lisio, the school where we visited the other day. Here is a draft we studied in a

Zoagli 3heavy-duty drafting lesson for velvets which took a lot of brain power. I loved the little old loom in the last picture because of all the heavy weights dangling off of the back of the loom. Click to get a close up of those Zoagli 4weights.