Vines and Leaves

The local newspaper publishes a wine-related magazine a couple of times a year. They're asking artists to submit artwork to be featured on the cover of the magazine this year. So, I've been looking through the photos I took at a local vineyard last spring, images of vines with new shoots just starting to appear.

Here's one image, after some cropping and manipulation, then indexing to 11 colors:



I'm weaving with wefts of green, beige, and medium tan.



The magazine editors want artwork that can be easily resized to fit their page layout (8.25 by 10.5 inches, which is a 1-to-1.27 ratio) so I had to do some "reshaping" in Photoshop to come up with something that after wet finishing should be the right proportions.

If this one doesn't make the cut as cover art, I'll offer it to the winery owner first, then to the general public. As this is a major wine-growing region, there ought to be a market for wine-related art, right?

Daisies

Last Fall, I took a photo of some maroon-and-green daisies growing in my in-law's garden, thinking it would make a good weaving.



In the original image, the red was a dark red-violet. I didn't have exactly the right red in my stash, so I wound off a skein from that gigantic cone of tomato-red rayon, and overdyed it with blue to darken it a little. It didn't bend as far toward purple as the original hue, but it darkened and dulled that bright red just enough. The other two wefts are a light green and a medium yellow-green.

I have enough yardage left on this warp for two or maybe three more pieces, and then it'll be time to wind another warp. The big question is: what sort of warp? I've had a lot of fun with the black warp, and am almost feeling guilty for not trying some other techniques, such as dark/light end-on end for multi-weft double-weave, or warp tapestry (in which the colors are in the warp, and the wefts lighten or darken the warp colors on the face of the cloth). Almost guilty enough to contemplate trying something new, but probably not quite! I've still got some images queued up that were designed to be woven on black.

A Peony?

Or is it a dahlia? The image source (a former neighbor who loves visiting gardens and photographing flowers) identified it as a peony, and the foliage is more peony-like than dahlia-like, but I'm not absolutely sure - it could be either.

An Early Tulip

It's awfully early for tulips, even here in California. Actually, our daffodils leaves are just beginning to peek up out of the ground, but neighbors who planted theirs years ago already have blooms!

These tulips, though, are the woven kind. Here's what I had done by lunch-time:



And by dinner-time, the piece was completely woven, including a textured top hem:



I don't expect to see tulips in the garden for months, yet!

Another Flower

Dahlia, perhaps? I don't know for sure. But here it is after the first 600 or 700 picks:



The view above (taken late yesterday) shows my snazzy new lower hem, which has a graduated range of values across the width, with the lightest/brightest value where the signature goes.

Here is the flower with image completed, and the top hem woven:



There was a major halt to production somewhere in the middle of the piece while DH helped me sort out a problem with the loom, in which the cables that move the upper knife and lower knife into the (hopefully) right positions so that hooks are grabbed (or not, as appropriate) by the upper knife when it's time to open the next shed, well, um, they lost their grip on reality. The result was that the rearmost hooks on modules 7 and 8 sat too low to be able to catch a ride on the upper knife when it opens the shed. A little work, and a little swearing, and things are back the way they should be. Weaving is now progressing accurately. Thank heavens for in-house engineers!

By the end of the day, I was setting out cones in anticipation of the next piece, which is an image of bright orange tulips with deeper red at the base of the bloom. I chose the slightly darker orange cotton and the slightly darker yellow-green Tencel to combine with the infamous bright red rayon. All are the same size (20/2) and ready to go to work tomorrow morning.

The S-Word...

... a cautionary tale in which "something different, part 2" became a full-size sample.

So there I was, chugging along on the 3-weft version of the bamboo grove, but not really liking what was developing. As usual, when that happens it's because of the colors or values or saturation levels of the yarns I've chosen to work with.

I started out with 3 greens. One was a very pretty (but very subtle) pale green, one was a mid-value olive-ish green, and one a darker olive-ish green. The pale green, when combined with the black warp, just sat there and looked like a pale grey. Ick. It had no pop at all.

So finally (it took a while because I'm stubborn) I said "what the hell, this isn't working" and started trying other yarn colors. First, I swapped a bright lemon yellow for the pale green, which made the foliage stand out more, but didn't play nice with the mid-olive-green.

Then I swapped various other yarns in different combinations, even trying a bright emerald green as the "dark" yarn. Ewww! Who thought that was a good idea?

Finally, a positively fluorescent yellow-green, combined with a mid-value olive green a little lighter than the first mid-olive yarn and the original dark olive yarn made me happy. That was about 200 picks from the end of the piece...



The loose pirns on either side of the weaving are some of the colors I tried and decided to flunk from the class.

So, if I were to weave this piece again, I know which colors I'd use. However, I was pretty happy with the "part 1" version that needed only 2 wefts (thus only 2 shuttles and faster weaving), so a new version is unlikely. It was, however, a good learning experience. Sample isn't a dirty word, after all.

Just out of curiosity, I looked back at my blog history, trying to figure out when I started on this warp. Turns out the 30-yard warp went on the loom back in June. I've woven a LOT of pieces, and still have many yards to go. Amazing how long a 30-yard warp lasts!

And Now For Something Different...

at least, on a different part of the color wheel, here's "moonlight in the panda's garden:"



This is part 1 of a test. In this piece, there are 2 wefts, a bright lemon yellow and a light-medium green (with lots of yellow in it). I want to weave another copy with 3 wefts, using a bright yellow-green, a medium green and a medium-dark green. It will be very instructive to see what the perceived differences are.

And on the color front, the dyepots gave me these skeins:



On the lower left, a skein that started as white Tencel, dyed to what I hoped would be a very pale gold. Not pale enough. It's a nice color, and I'll use it, but I need to do another try to get a less-saturated gold (maybe with some beige in it?). The other two started as wind-offs from the infamous bubblegum pink cone of rayon. I wanted an orchid pink and a sort-of-salmon orange, which I got. It's nice when that happens, but less easy to predict when you start with a not-white yarn.

BTW, I've posted a couple of new things on the sales blog (see them here).

Gilding the Lily

In reverse order; here's the top part:



And the middle part:



And the bottom part:



Sorry about the color. There was sun in the sky when I started weaving, then the sun fell below the hill behind the studio, then it got dark... Which means that the fluorescent lamp over the loom had more and more influence over the apparent white balance seen by the camera. I tried using the flash, but it just washed out the colors.

Another Flower

Actually, it's a two-fer. Here's the lower part:



And the upper part, about 200 picks before the beginning of the top hem:



Wefts are dark fuchsia Tencel, the famous scarlet rayon, and a yellow-orange Tencel.

A Rose in the Rain

The original image, indexed to 14 colors (some scarlets, some fuchsias, some whites):



And on the loom, after the bottom hem and the first 650 or so picks of the image:



Miraculously, the larger raindrops actually show up, although they may want some enhancement (metallic fabric paint? stitching in metallic thread?) but I'll wait until after wet finishing to decide.

And here's the weaving with about 150 picks to go before starting the top hem:



Like I said, I've got an awful lot of red yarn to use up!

Shipping Work Away

One side effect of my decision to mount weavings on canvas stretchers is a decreased ease of shipping. With a wall piece mounted by a hanging rod, whether there's a reinforcing rod in the bottom or not, all I needed to do was roll the wall piece around a firm core tube (something like the center of a paper towel roll, but longer), and then wrap it up in tissue and foam sheets and stuff it into a nice sturdy cardboard mailing tube.

I've used this method to ship work all over the US - and several to the UK - and as far as I know, they've all arrived safely and intact.

However, a wall piece mounted on a canvas stretcher requires a box. Naturally, there's never a commercial box with the appropriate dimensions. Today, I had to run around to 3 stores looking at shipping boxes, and although what I wanted was 14 by 14 by 3 or 4 inches, what I got was 14 by 14 by 14. Out came the box knife and metal straight edge, and the box soon shrank to 14 by 14 by 4 inches. Then, of course, there's the issue of packing materials. Luckily this household is inhabited by packrats, and we stash away any bubble wrap or air pillows that we receive from Amazon (or wherever).

All this to say that the piece for the exhibit in New Mexico finally got to UPS about 5 minutes before closing time today, and will reach its destination before the deadline. Hey, the UPS driver was idling his motor in the parking lot while I dealt with the nice woman at The UPS Store - what timing! The box went straight onto the truck!



You might have seen this (or part of it) on the loom. I actually like it better cropped to the required 12 by 12 inches - what it lost was wasted real-estate, anyway.

In any case, if there are any blog readers in the Albuquerque area, please visit the BECA Lab A.D. (art & design) exhibit at New Studio A.D. at 312 Rosemont Ave NE between February 4 and February 18, 2011. If you go, and if you have a camera with you, and if photos are allowed, please take a shot or two for me of the piece in situ?

One of my few New Year's Resolutions is to be very diligent about submitting work to as many textile-related exhibits as possible. I've been lax about the submission thing this past year, but now? I'm on it! Some deadlines coming up are January 17 (Textiles in a Tube), February 4 (Olive Hyde Gallery 43rd Annual Textiles Exhibit), and March 7 (HGA's Small Expressions).

Textiles in a Tube, for obvious reasons, means easy shipping, and I have a piece already chosen to submit. The Olive Hyde Gallery is in Fremont, California, close enough to hand-deliver; but Small Expressions requires work to be a maximum of 15 inches in any dimension, so that means the piece must be mounted on a canvas stretcher (or otherwise cropped somehow from the loom-standard 16.5-inch finished width).

Back to work! Don't we all love paperwork? And that's all the submission thing is, just more paperwork. Oh, goody. I'd rather be weaving, but this year, I've vowed to conquer the paperwork.

The Last Five Towels

They're finally washed, pressed, hemmed, pressed again, folded, tagged, and ready to go into inventory:



All are woven in 1/4 and 4/1 satin, except the second from the left, which has all four flavors of 5-end satin. The differences only show at certain angles, otherwise one might think it had only 1/4 and 4/1 in it.

Zinnia, Again

Today I reached the end of the zinnia just about lunchtime. The photo below was taken a few inches before that.



You'll be seeing plenty of red on the loom in the future. See the big cone in the top center of the photo? That's over 6 pounds of tomato-red rayon, sitting on the floor on the far side of the loom. I can always wind off skeins and nudge the color one way or another by overdyeing, but still, it's a lot of red.

I'll have to find a way to use it for scarves, or for yardage (although I don't wear a lot of bright red). Or wind off skeins for sale... or???

Z is for Zinnia

Next up on the jacquard loom is a close-up of a zinnia. This is turning out to be a series of close-up flower portraits! Must be a Georgia O'Keefe period in my design life.....



The structure is the same as on the previous piece - 9-end shaded satin with 3 wefts (in this case, scarlet, fuchsia, and yellow-gold), AKA weft-backed satin.

Actually, since the first 20/2 cotton warp I've put on this loom, I've only woven this type of structure. If it's 2 wefts, I use 8-end shaded satins, and if it's 3 wefts, I use 9-end shaded satins. Mostly because with 3 wefts, the 9-end satins pack in better so there's relatively more weft showing than warp, thus more intense colors.

I've sampled (ooooh, dirty word!) a few other structures, but keep going back to these two. "Help! I've fallen in the well and can't get out!" But it's a good well to be in. I'm happy here.

Mum's the Word

The chrysanthemum is finished (that is, the weaving is done although not the finishing). I wanted to take a photo before the center of the flower rotated down around the sandpaper beam too far, so at the point the picture was taken, I still had about 150 picks (about 2.25 inches) to go, plus the top border.



Tomorrow's agenda, among other things, includes choosing a piece to enter in an exhibit that wants every piece to be mounted on a 12-inch-by-12-inch (precisely!) canvas stretcher. So I have to go through what's in inventory or what's waiting to go into inventory, and pick something that can be mounted as specified. It's an open (unjuried) exhibit, so I didn't have to submit anything specific in advance, just say I would send something that meets the size criterion. The only other requirement is that it be "contemporary." If only I knew exactly what they consider "contemporary!"

Looms 2011

Meg (on the South Island of New Zealand) has asked bloggers to post what's on (or not...) their looms as of January 1 of the New Year.

I've taken these photos in my studio in California (US Pacific Standard Time, varying times during the afternoon).

The 24-shaft AVL is empty, but only for the past 24 hours.



Yesterday, I cut off and stay-stitched the last 5 tea towels (or whatever you want to call 'em) from the most recent warp. Before wet finishing, they posed for a quick photo:



Recap: 20/2 unmercerized cotton threaded for blocks of 5-end satin; the warp was enough for 15 towels, each with a different liftplan. The weft was 3 skeins of 30/2 mercerized cotton, each dyed a slightly different shade of blue (5 towels of each hue).

On the jacquard loom, I began the first weaving of the year:



Not legible in the photo above is the new lower border I designed, with the new year on it, and the signature placed so that when the piece is mounted on a canvas stretcher, the sig should be right-way-up on the back side of the stretcher. Fingers crossed, here...



By the end of the day, it looks more like the chrysanthemum it's meant to be:



Happy New Year to one and all! May your looms overflow with colorful yarns in exciting designs!