Paper-backed Fabric

The paper-backed fabric had all dried out thoroughly this morning. The two orange/brown pieces are woven by Cally Booker. There is a slight amount of paste which has come through the fabric but fortunately it is at a corner which will be trimmed off anyway. The top right fabric is a Japanese cotton while the other two are dyed by the owners (Memo to self:- I must find out how these were done).  These are all for the Japanese bookbinding class in Dundee.

Text-books say you can remove the fabric from its board after an hour but I find that they are still damp then and,  when dried, they curl up. Hence leaving them overnight. They are all nice and flat.

These two pieces of fabric were done for my own books. Christmas Carol is at the top and the cover for my new Day book at the bottom. I did wonder if the last would work as the decoration applied to the green cotton  is quite thick. But it is all okay.

I can't see these these two books being bound for the next week or so. Time I had another blitz on completing projects!  But not till I get back from Dundee. I fly there on Friday the 18th. Robin, our son-in-law, will be here to look after Michael. They can discuss the world and what's wrong with it for five days without drawing breathe.

What I need to do in the next week is make sure I take everything with me for teaching seven people how to make Japanese style books. A bit of listmaking is required.

I have taken photos of a Morning Glory book ready for the entry form. In the Event will be photographed today. I am toying with the idea of doing a double weave book as well. I have till 31st March to complete it and I only need 7 pages for what I have in mind. I will just get on and weave it as I need it anyway.

Penguins

This teatowel says on it

Pinguiones del mar Argentino-Antartida
Tierra del Fuego USHAIA Patagonia Argentina

USHAIA is 'The End of the Earth'

A friend has just been on a seven week cruise round South America and brought this back. The printing is very plasticised and it is not very functional as a tea towel but, never mind, I think it's great and it is pinned up in the corridor for all to see.

I have finished tying on the multicoloured warp and started winding it on but stopped to have another go at making 'In the Event'.  This time it worked! The Bockingford will stand up by itself but can't be accurately folded and Fabriano Academia  can be folded but can't stand up by itself. So what to do? The original artwork is two A5 pages printed on a landscape A4. I printed out out these A4 pages on Bockingford and cut them apart by hand, trimming them all to be exactly the same size. The Fabriano was cut into strips 5 cm wide, trimmed to be exactly the same width and folded in half. I creased the fold with a ruler, These were then glued to the A5 sheets while lining the sheets up carefully in the book guide. Result is a nice four-square concertina book which is currently in the book press. Later today I will attach the black ribbon and buckle. I will make another one so I have two to choose from. 

This afternoon's job is pasting fabric to paper. It is sunny but bitterly cold and I am not keen on trying to operate in the garage because my hands will get too cold to be sure of doing things accurately. So it will be in the kitchen. After all wheat starch paste is hardly poisonous!

Multicoloured Warp 2

Anything Daryl Lancaster can do in the way of messing up a warp I can do better (and be even sicker - see 'Annie Get Your Gun'). This photo shows the ends of the dyed multicolour warp on the floor. Only the violet/lavender yarns have been dyed by me. The rest are all commercial yarns in 50:50 wool/silk. It does seem to be dominated by the Leicester Longwool in pink and white of which there is not a lot.  It is the only pure wool yarn in the warp.

This has all been worked out by painting a  master plan and the weft is all lavender which should tone it down.

This is the complete warp on the lease sticks ready for tying on to the ghost warp in the background.

Maybe it will all work.  This afternoon, I will start tying on.

Yesterday I was at the Kennet Valley Guild meeting.  Rosie Price brought along a large number of cones of silk noil from Winghams Wools which we pored (drooled?) over. I ended up with a cone of ginger colour and the promise of half a cone of burgundy. And I said I didn't need any more yarn!

Bookbinding

Michael has gone off to have a blood transfusion today. He was collected at 0745 so I have had the house to myself and have concentrated on book binding.

I removed the sample of the double weave book from the Kombo and re-tied the warp. Then

spent quite a lot of time experimenting with JetFX paper from ArtVanGo on scraps of woven Tencel and it works!!. The text was ironed on as shown and pieces of greyboard cut to size, inserted in the pockets formed by the double weave and I hand stitched the edges together with some of the weft thread. The weaving is done with JustOurYarns spaced dyed Tencel. Each cloth had a different colour way. The weave is a 3 and 1 broken twill. I made the two ends different to experiment. I intended to fold back the left hand end inside the pocket and stitch the end closed but that left a noticeable ridge so I am going for changing the cloth, weave 20 mm, change again for a couple of rows, hemstitch and have a small fringe. All I have to do is to decide how many pages I need to weave for the final version. I do know that I need an odd number.

I also examined 'In the Event' carefully and decided I have to go back to using Bockingford paper. As you can see, the Fabriano Academia  is all wrinkled  from the edge glued with PVA. I need to make a folding guide some how.

In between times, I finished another Morning Glory book. Nothing is ever perfect but I would be happy to see this one in an exhibition.

I have also glued endpapers on to Christmas Carol and my new Day Book.

A good day and it is only half past three!

Warps

I wound two lavender dyed skeins into 6 warps each of 40 threads. I took 4 of them, folded them in halves and half again, tied them tightly then space dyed deep violet between ties, steamed them and voila! The second bundle was 2 warps treated in the same way. To the right, you can see four skeins of lavender dyed wool/silk for the weft.

The warps will be dry by Thursday and I will start on tying up to the ghost warp. All the rest of the warp is laid out on the breast beam and it does look lurid. I keep telling myself that using a lavender weft through out will tone it down. Boy, does it need toning down!!

Since I had the warping mill set up, I wound the warp (3 colours, gold, ochre and violet) for a wool scarf in log cabin. It strikes me that there is a bit too much violet in my life.

Yesterday was spent at a Speed Awareness Course. My daughter, Anne, has been on one and said it was very social, lovely tea and cake. Not in Herefordshire. We had two ten minutes breaks in a four hour  course (which is not good practice to start with). There was no way 20 people could pour themselves tea and drink it in ten minutes. Most amusing of all. There were 5 women and 15 men. I do not recall ever seeing a queue for a male loo before. And there was not even a dry biscuit never mind high class cake. Clearly Warwickshire does these things differently (differently = more civilised).  

The other excitement for today was that booking opened for the courses at the Festival of Quilts. I am not a quilter but the FOQ courses are often about design or dyeing/printing and I have got on the two-day course I wanted as well as two short courses on applique. This is not till August so something to look forward to. Dorothy, my sister, has booked as well and will be staying with us. It is only an hour's drive to the NEC. 

I have been taking photos for Michael to work on for his Garden-thru-the-year book. This is anemone blanda atrocaerulea of which we have many. It seeds itself round the garden and pops up everywhere - like our cyclamens but unless absolutely necessary, neither of them are ever weeded up.  The flowers are about an inch across.

Michael has pages of paintings of cyclamen coum but has moved on to these anemones. He was quizzing me about how the book would be bound. I want to do this book in various forms of Coptic binding. I would like to try some of the more complicated bindings. Also Coptic binding allows the book to open flat so he could have a painting across two pages. And then I could use guard pages which would allow a little text but not much.

This is an example. This is my journal for designing books in. The guard section has start dates and what I did finally. The following pages contain design ideas. This is the start of 'Sir Patrick Spens'.

But  I must not be deflected into starting in earnest on that book. I have just made a horrible discovery. I joined a Complex Weavers Study Group last September and though that I had a year to practice in and then in September 2011 I would have to produce some samples to share around. Well I was wrong. Delivery date for the first lot is May 1st. I have designed what I want to weave but it needs 24 shafts which means the Megado. But the Megado is waiting for the next warp to be tied to the ghost warp and woven (6 yards of it) and I have not finished dyeing the warp yet. That has become this afternoon's job. And I would like to use the ghost warp a third time. Oh dearie, dearie me.

The only saving grace is that the samples are only a sideline for this weaving. I intend to use the main part as  an entry to a Midlands Textile Forum Exhibition in September. 

Must go and get on!!!! 

Last Lot of Indigo Dyeing

On Wednesday, all the indigo dyed skeins were dry enough to weigh and sort. I had one mid-indigo skein too many and was a little short on very dark indigo. So I revived the indigo vat in the afternoon, added some Spectralite and overdyed the spare skein to a nice dark indigo. I am getting what is really navy blue this time around.  And since I might as well take advantage of any indigo vat going, I overdyed two pieces of fabric which I knew I would never use in their then state - came out nicely. I also dyed one of the calico shoppers. I have this idea of doing toucans or parrots in Mola work and indigo might be a suitable background colour. 

I got round to finishing off the first 'Morning Glory' book. Brown Pastel paper cover with blue Como silk sewing. The title label really is on square! But the morning glory below the Kanji characters is not bright enough. That has been corrected.

The inside of the book - title page.

This one has a mistake on the front cover in the sewing so it will not do for the exhibition. But I always intended to make 10 anyway to give round the family and friends.

The concertina book, 'In The Event' has been printed out on Bockingford duplex Inkjet paper. It looks good but I had not realised that 190gsm paper would be so difficult to crease exactly where you want it creased. It is glued up and has been pressed for an hour. Now out just to make sure it is drying properly. I will press it again before adding the coverboards. With 190 gsm paper, it is quite sturdy and almost stands up by itself. Almost but not quite. I sent away for some buckles and have tried out various closure arrangements. I eventually settled on black grosgrain ribbon plus a buckle at the back. I shall make one or two more of these books but I don't see this being given away.

I got round to weaving a bit more of the double weave book. and am on my third page now. At 36ppi on a table loom, it is slow going. My sister, Dorothy, sent me a book on transferring print to fabric from Committed to Cloth and I need to practice some of the techniques discussed. What is being woven at the moment is a  four page sample to practice on. But I need to try out techniques on something less valuable first!!!

Anne Field, the devore/collapsed weave expert,  who lives in Christchurch, NZ is okay. Although their house is not seriously damaged, their china and furniture is destroyed. For some hours, they had no water or electricity but facilities are being restored. Our thoughts are with her and the people of Christchurch.