Thursday is Dyeing Day (2nd Installment)

These are the three pieces of calico dyed with black  Procion MX (and red and yellow) The one on the right had the strongest dye solution. All were left in a nice warm place for 4 hours. After rinsing, I put them through the washing machine at 60 degrees along with some bath towels. Then ironed them dry.

Any of these would be suitable for what I have in mind - which is a cover for A Christmas Carol.

A few sewing trials are now required!

I have finished weaving the Summer and Winter flower towel and have started on the next one which is odd but nice. I will post a photo when I have done a bit more.

Thursday is Dyeing Day

Yesterday I went to London and met up with a group of Kennet Valley weavers at a Paddintgon Station coffee shop. After which we took a tube to Finsbury Park and invaded Handweavers Studio who behaved with impeccable courtesy as we all clustered around giving each other advice. I was very good. I only bought some high twist S and Z yarn because I bought some before and found I did not have enough to make anything with it. Now to re-read Anne Field's book on Collapse Weave. I also bought Marg Coe's book and read a lot of it on the train coming home. Since I am studying Tied Weaves, it is timely. We invaded a cafe up the street and had a very good selection of sandwiches. Some of the group went off to be intellectual at Tate Modern. Marie and I took a tube to Russell Square and walked down Southampton Row to Falkiner's, the paper people. Oh my, what a lovely shop. They sell bookbinding things. But tools are in the basement while the ground floor is full of paper, handmade, decorated, you name it. I found some interesting Italian decorated paper. The patterns were a little large for anything I might make so I left them but have stored away the data for future use. Lovely Japanese chiyogami and katazome paper. Also very fancy patterned Japanese tissue paper. Can't quite see a use for it or I would have bought some. They also had some patterned sheets with pre WWII designs which I did buy. Shades of Ravilious. And some glue and manila.  Marie bought some glue and some Japanese paper. After which we returned to Paddington very happy and caught trains home.

Today Michael was off before 8 o'clock for treatment and may not be back today. So I set about the dyeing. Some items on my list have been done.

1.  dyeing Madi's skeins to various shades of indigo blue by varying the number of times each skein is dipped - no indigo bath today - do at weekend
2. dyeing some skeins of wool/silk in violet dye and finishing off space dyeing a section of that warp in a darker shade of violet - done
3. trying out some black Procion dyes on cotton fabric. The last time I got a dark grey which was quite attractive but I really wanted black so on Thursday I shall start by dyeing small pieces of cotton in each of the three different blacks I have and then try a larger piece using the best of them - done. After Sandra Rude's comments on strength, temperature and timing for Procion MX black, I have done three samples with increasing strength of dye and they are sitting in the scullery in the warm.
4. trying out colours and dyeing times for some samples of fleece and handspun. This is preparation for the re-enactment of 'The Weaving of the Newbury Coat' which happened in 1811 and was the result of a wager between two Newbury men. Could a coat be made in 24 hours starting from the sheep? It could. So the Guild is going to do it again. - unable to find out what I am supposed to be doing with this. Hence no indigo bath till I find out
5. I would like to weave a pattern of fishes in Summer and Winter using space dyed yarn. So I will be doing that as well. Not done. I have gone off the fishes anyway! I prefer trees.
6. dyeing some skeins of wool two colours of yellow. I am preparing for weaving my yellow scarf for the October Exhibition at Greenham. I am also going to do a yellow scarf in lace weave as the improvers in the Guild weaving course are all doing lace weave this year. And I don't see why the tutors can't join in. Done - very satisfactory. 3 skeins 70 gms each of lemon yellow and one of gold ochre.

Here  are some of them hanging up in the garage with the two colours of yellow in the foreground.

And I have warped up a loom for a beginner who starts the Guild weaving course next week.

Next Thursday Dyeing

My last blog was on Friday. On Saturday I went to Kennet Valley Guild and on Sunday Anne and her family came round. Madi helped me turn out the scullery and then wound 7 x 100 gram skeins of wool for me. I need these for next Thursday when I have a dyeing day. That is going to include

1.  dyeing Madi's skeins to various shades of indigo blue by varying the number of times each skein is dipped
2. dyeing some skeins of wool/silk in violet dye and finishing off space dyeing a section of that warp in a darker shade of violet 
3. trying out some black Procion dyes on cotton fabric. The last time I got a dark grey which was quite attractive but I really wanted black so on Thursday I shall start by dyeing small pieces of cotton in each of the three different blacks I have and then try a larger piece using the best of them
4. trying out colours and dyeing times for some samples of fleece and handspun. This is preparation for the re-enactment of 'The Weaving of the Newbury Coat' which happened in 1811 and was the result of a wager between two Newbury men. Could a coat be made in 24 hours starting from the sheep? It could. So the Guild is going to do it again.
5. I would like to weave a pattern of fishes in Summer and Winter using space dyed yarn. So I will be doing that as well.
6. dyeing some skeins of wool two colours of yellow. I am preparing for weaving my yellow scarf for the October Exhibition at Greenham. I am also going to do a yellow scarf in lace weave as the improvers in the Guild weaving course are all doing lace weave this year. And I don't see why the tutors can't join in.

I have decided what to do about a new Day Book. I definitely want one which is A4 and I haven't got one spare. So I am going to use the blank pages in the Design Book and, in the meantime, make an A4 book out of the A3 cartridge paper I have just ordered. When it is done, it will become a Design/Day book.

This all adds to my list of projects. Derek (son-in-law) produced a cookery book on Sunday  which is falling apart. Could I do anything about it? Well I can try.

Record/Sketch/Note Books

Sometimes I think I use the blog to talk to myself. (How do I know what I think until I tell myself?). Anyway this is about books for writing in. No, not bookbinding again but what the books are used for.

This has arisen because my day book which has been running since 18th January 2008 has come to an end. It is a spiral bound book and I have glued so many sheets of paper and photos into it that it is bulging and the back cover has come off altogether.On looking through it, I am surprised by how many of the ideas actually did get woven up.

Before finding a new journal to continue with, I decided to have an inventory of the various notebooks I have - and was more than a bit shocked.

1) There are series of A4-sized  Lever Arch files which contain loose papers with details of weavings I have done.  Drafts, calculations, notes on dimensions and finishing together with samples of yarns used and, if possible a sample piece of weaving. For some reason, I started with labeling them A, B, C and the projects are numbered 1 to 10 inside. We are now on Project P4, that is Project No 4 in Lever Arch file P. I have no intention of changing this system.

2) There are  two A4-sized books with lined paper using for taking notes at courses I have attended, held at Kennet Valley Guild or West Dean College or wherever. But weaving courses are included in the Lever Arch files of No 1 above as they usually contain drafts and photos

3) The Day Book into which everything goes, ideas for weavings, textiles, books. ruminations on what the Conservators are doing on the Common. This was A5 and cartridge paper.
4) An A6 book with lined paper for recording what I do in the way of bookbinding. It is too small for photos and drawings or samples
5) An A5 book with lined paper for recording what dyeing has been done
 6) A spiral-bound sketch pad size A2!!! No I was not being dreadfully extravagant. I found it in the cupboard and am using it for textile samples for books I am making. It is so big that I can put down 3 or 4 samples per page.

7) An A3 spiral bound book which I use for the Bourneville classes In Creative Textiles. It is half full already.

So far these have been commercial books

8) A Coptic book bound by me, in which I am designing some special books. The paper is cream cartridge paper and is good enough to do coloured drawings on.  I shall continue with this.
9) an A4 book bound by me  and containing a real selection of different papers, handmade etc. This was used as a project book for weavings. It still has some blank pages in it.


So do I need all of these? And what am I going to do about a day book? As I use it, the Day Book is for first thoughts. Nothing takes up more than 3 or 4 pages and mostly a project is just one page.

I am glad I decided to write this blog. When I started, I thought that I should amalgamate some of the books but no, I don't think I will. What I will do is put them all on the same shelf. And really I would like an A4 book for the Day Book. I am not sure I have one in the stash so maybe I will make one. I would like lots of different sorts of paper as in 9 above.

Summer and Winter Drafts

I finished the first kitchen towel and I am weaving this Summer and Winter pattern right now. 

I have been weaving steadily since the last post and also dreaming up further drafts I can do on the same warp. Amazing how rotten most of them were. I have got one, possibly two which are okay and which will be woven into kitchen towels. What is surprising how alike they look despite starting from something very different. They ended up looking like Space Invaders from the 1980s.

This is a reasonable draft. The next may not happen. I am not sure I like it at all and would rather repeat one done already.

I have got reasonably expert at creating and editing drafts using this weaving technique. I don't care much for any of them. This is due to

1) using up odd ends of cottolin in the stash and so the colours are not what I would use if I had a project planned from the start
2) 6 blocks is limiting. What I need for a decent pattern is the 32 shafts of the Megado.

I should get at least one more kitchen towel out of this warp after the flowers and leaves. And possibly one more. After that I am starting on a multicloth project to be turned into a book.

Tomorrow, if the snow holds off, I will go to Bourneville for a class.

Finished Another Project

I finished off the Summer and Winter samples on 8 shafts last night and was left with 2 metres of warp! Being lazy, I went off to find/create a draft which would work on the same threading and this is what I came up with.

It has been woven in blue and red, not blue and white and I have managed two repeats so far.

Each repeat is about four inches square. I will do a length of this and then find another draft. It is nice to find that I can create a draft that works and even edit it correctly

The other thing I have done today is to file things away. Piles of postcards, print-outs of photos, Mostly gone. But I have a problem with records. When I worked, I kept each job separate and now my mind wants to do the same with textiles. But that means far too much filing. At work, we had ISO9001 which automatically means too much filing. The result for my textiles is a real mishmash. I have a large spiral bound A3 book for Creative Textiles, I have a smaller than A5 book to write what I have done in bookbinding. This is a mistake because it is not big enough to paste in pictures. And I have an A5 day book where I paste in postcards, do drawings etc. This is within two pages of the end. All this came to a head today when I realised that I wanted to file away a batch of fabric samples which had to do with book covers. You've guessed it!! I started another book. This one is something from the back of the cupboard and is A2!! which means I can get three fabric samples on one page.

The fabric samples have all been screen-printed with the title and author for A Christmas Carol and are interesting.

1. I will have to get anothe Thermofax screen made. The title in mock Mediaeval script is useless. 
2. I used the existing Thermofax screen to print on to various scraps of handwoven material. A piece of silk at 60epi, a piece of Tencel at 30 epi and a piece of cottolin at 20epi.   The cottolin was not acceptable but the other two were fine. This is for a book I intend to weave. (Well why not?)

Happy New Year

Happy and Prosperous New Year to you all.

A very senior RAF man once said to me on finishing a meeting and saying Goodbye,  'May all your antennas meet their specs'. I wonder what the translation into weaving/textile terms is.

'May all your weavings come out as you planned'?

Doesn't have the same ring somehow and yet people don't write specifications for weavings, at  or least not often.

'May all your textiles have the WOW factor'

Hmmh. Anyone got any ideas?

Now is the moment for New Year Resolutions. There was a nice article in the Guardian yesterday about NYR which said that not achieving the NYR was not important. What was important is that you still believe you are capable of change/improvement. I am resolved for go for a walk more often. It ought to be possible to get out of the house for 30 minutes every day. 

Ellen Carrlee, the Alaskan conservator, lists 10 projects to be accomplished in 2011 which I think is an attractive idea. Mind you, her list includes items like 'finish cataloging the basketry collection'.

My list goes as follows

1. Finish dyeing for the second multicolour warp and get it on the Megado. The ghost warp is waiting. This will be a jacket.
2. By end March, I need to weave samples of Donsu using the gold paper thread I have from Japan. This is for the CW Japanese Textile Study Group, Needs the Megado. Also needs designing
3. Finish off Summer and winter samples currently on Kombo.
4. Multiple cloth fabric for concertina book. Needed for Malvern Exhibition end of March. Can be done on the Kombo. Need to check that I can screen print on the cloth - and need to design it. This may be too ambitious.
5. Make concertina book 'In the Event' by end March. I have done a lot of design for this. Again Malvern Exhibition
6. Yellow scarf for October 2011 Exhibition in Greenham. This is designed and will be log cabin in two shades of yellow with a few additional violet threads in warp and weft. Have found the violet yarn. Need to dye 100 gms each of the two yellows. Weave on the Voyager
7. Three cushion covers for October 2011 Exhibition in Greenham woven with yarn dyed with natural dyes. Goose eye twill on the warp which will be indigo dyed. Each cushion a different colour of natural dye.
8. Weave up the high twist yarn I bought last year. If it works, do another scarf for October 2011 Exhibition in Greenham (Too many scarves)
9. Caladium leaves in Diversified Plain Weave. For the Leek Museum Exhibition (Midland Textile Forum) in September 2011
10. Make some books using Keith Smith's book on Coptic binding  

Of course Annette Lucas will want a few things making in her class! And the Kennet Valley weaving course starts up this month. The improvers are doing lace weave this year and I thought of doing a lacey wool scarf on the Voyager which will be back home shortly. Funny how much I have missed it. I can do a scarf on that in two or three days.

In the immediate future, I must investigate the unfinished projects lying around upstairs.

I have finished binding Pinocchio. The cover was printed on Photo Glossy II paper on the inkjet and is protected by a sheet of clear acetate. This is inset on grey board which is covered with black bookcloth.

The endcovers are black and white handmade marble paper. I had a lot of trouble trying to line this paper. Being handmade, it is smudged on the back. I eventually gave up on the lining paper and carefully selected sections of paper where there were no smudges on the back!! All this was accomplished using the nice bookbinding equipment I was given at Christmas by the family.

The only photos I took at the V and A yesterday were of a collection of Mughal windows. Here is an example. I have in the past done a weaving based on one of these. Might add that to the project list!!!