Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Woven shibori

 I really enjoy weaving cloth that is going to be scrunched, tied,creased, and crushed into a dyepot. Then it is pulled out like bedraggled butterfly wings, washed, dried and pressed back into supple cloth. Sometimes the cloth is disappointing although another dyebath can improve the design or not. It is always a risk and often  surprise.
 Sometimes I chose to use natural plant dyes which make the process even more time consuming and unpredictable. The cloth above was dyed using madder and eucalyptus leaves and bark from my garden. The final dyebath with logwood extract and indigo. See top right hand scarf in the first photo.
My favourite way to weave shibori threads into cloth is using a stick shuttle with the resist yarns randomly woven in. The pattern above will be similar to the scarf below which is more organic and fluid than the one being woven in th bottom photo..



Monday, July 1, 2013

Silk with alpaca



Our new yarn is lovely soft 70% New Zealand alpaca with 20% silk to give it some gleam. This is in four ply weight. The yarn takes a little longer to wet out with the silk but dyes beautifully and is so luscious and drapery.

Some of these are listed here.

More to come as soon as I dye them. The winter cold and damp makes dyeing more challenging. Cold clammy dye shed, slow drying and piles of hanks draped close to the fire in the living room.