dyeing – Page 4 – Backstrap Loom Weaving

Backstrap Weaving – Into the Deep End

When I sit here deciding on the title of my blog post, it’s amazing the number of times that the title “Lessons Learned” immediately comes to mind. But then I think…Nope, I’ve used that one before. It’s lovely to weave structures and follow methods that I have used dozens and dozens of times over. The lessons have been learned from multiple mishaps. There’s no risk. It’s all fun. The results are guaranteed.

My current project doesn’t fall into that category. I broke my rules about sampling which left me with a large-ish project with a number of firsts and, therefore, many risks. And, I am still not done, so who knows whether this will a mess or success? Many lessons are being learned along the way while I splash around in the deep end.

I am still in ikat mode. You might be thoroughly bored with this topic by now. I certainly am not! There has been plenty to keep me on my toes.

It was time to move on from 30/2 silk to the finer 60/2 silk. If I had been sensible, I would have woven a small sample to see how well I could handle keeping the pattern aligned in 60/2 silk, test the new methods that I have been hoping to use, as well as sample the dye colors.

Problem number 1: I decided that I should re-use the pattern that I had created some years ago in an ikat project in black-and-white in 20/2 cotton. I felt that I could double the pattern and still not end up with anything too wide in the finer silk. Well, it turns out that 60/2 silk is not all that much finer than 20/2 cotton. I drew out my pattern and calculated the number of threads I would need without fully realizing just how wide the project would end up being. Once I realized how wide it would be, there was the opportunity to scrap it and start over with something smaller but I was too carried away by the pattern at that point! I couldn’t wait to see how it would turn out.

Problem number 2: I didn’t check my calculations and, therefore, didn’t dye enough thread in the base “rye” color that I like. I prefer the more subdued rye color over white. Once I had measured out the rye-color dye, there was only a tiny bit left in the jar. I thought ….What the heck…and threw it all in. Then I discovered the mistake in my calculations. So, I was short on yarn, with no dye left. I was in a position where I could have changed my pattern to a smaller one in order to suit the amount of thread that I had dyed. But no, I had my heart set on that pattern and wasn’t giving up. I dyed more thread in a color called “wheat” and figured out a way to work it in so that it looked like it had been planned.

Problem number 3: While I had placed the wheat-colored thread in the warp in what seemed like a nicely balanced way, I forgot to take into account the distribution of the threads into the bundles that would be tied with ikat tape and the placement of the wheat color in the pattern itself. It turns out the the wheat color wasn’t so well positioned after all. But…..I was beyond caring at that point!

Problem number 4: This wasn’t so much of a problem as a challenge. I wanted to divide the warp in two so that I could tie my pattern onto two layers of thread at once and create an instant mirror reflection. I divided it so that it was half its width, placing one half on top of the other, and checked countless times that I had the two layers aligned correctly so that I could start tying the pattern. This was my first time doing this and I dithered over it for a long time! I did something similar in another ikat project. That time I halved the warp so that it was half its length and, for some reason, it was easier.

Problem number 5: After all that dithering, I measured incorrectly and started tying the pattern in the wrong position. Never mind, I had only just started, I cut out the ties and happily started again, very pleased with myself for having done so. Then, when I was well into it, I discovered that I had made another mistake and was off in the pattern by one bundle. Urgh. I wasn’t going to start over. I adjusted the pattern and I think I can get away with it!

Here’s most of the main pattern tied…

I am usually very particular about sampling before I launch into a large project. It never occurred to me to sample the dye colors. In terms of color, this project has not turned out ANYTHING like I what I had originally envisioned! Fortunately, I still love it! Of course the colors in the paper chart that I have are based on dyeing over white. I had to expect that dyeing over rye and wheat would produce tones that did not match the chart. In fact, I was hoping that they would be duller colors. I dyed several layers of color in this project and now I know that I really can’t expect any color, no matter how strong it is, to completely cover and cancel out the underlying color. I was just lucky that I didn’t end up with a muddy mess!

A discussion online had me thinking about weavers that work with natural dyes from plants that they grow themselves.. I am sure that they often get unexpected variations in the colors as rainfall and other conditions vary from year to year and must affect the quality, strength and tone of the colors that the plants produce.

This is the first color I dyed. It wasn’t what I had been expecting. I then tied some more sections on the green, adding some small motifs like the three you see here, to preserve this first color.

Below, you can see the result of the second layer of color. If I had been wanting teal, this would have been perfect. However, I had been expecting something VERY different. I tied off a few sections to preserve this color and unwrapped others ready for the third dyeing. Goodness knows what the third color will look like! At this point I was already contemplating Plan B: if this project was a disaster, I would take off all the ikat tape and dye the whole thing black. Then I would be able to save it by weaving some colorful patterns into it in supplementary weft. It would still be a nice “something”…just not an ikat “something”.

Deep breath….here comes color number three…again, not what I was expecting!

Above, you can see it with all the ikat tape removed from the two combined layers. The two remaining strips of tape are preserving the teal color and are tied to the two layers separately. This means that I can now open the warp to its full width and leave those strips of tape in place while I start the weaving. I always feel more comfortable weaving with some ties still in place as I believe that they help minimize the amount that the threads shift. I am not crazy about having the teal there and I will probably weave some motifs in supplementary weft on those strips to almost completely cover them.

Now to get the cross sticks in and make heddles…882 of them! It was fun peeling the two layers apart to see the completed pattern.

The threads are still sitting together in their little bundles, somewhat stuck together after having been tightly wrapped for so long. I try to leave them that way as much as I can as I think that this also helps stop them from shifting too much out of alignment (although it is really tempting to strum and fan the whole thing out to get the full effect of the pattern).

In other news, I am moving along with my latest book project even though this ikat project has been occupying a lot of time. Sitting at the frame and tying patterns is very relaxing after typing away on the book project but it also opens my mind up to thinking about the current instability here in Bolivia and also the dreadful bush fires in my other home, Australia. Many people have written to me with their concerns about the situation in Bolivia as well as for my family, friends and property in Australia. I am always grateful to receive those messages and I reply to them in as much detail as possible. I hope you will understand if I don’t feel like talking about any of that here.

I’ll leave you with a picture taken by my brother, Wayne, of little bit of re-growth in the blackened bush at the back of his home on the mid north coast of NSW.

Backstrap Weaving – Free Time

How did you all do surviving Black Friday and Cyber Monday? I didn’t buy anything but I have been doing my share of advertising for the fact that I published a new book of patterns last month and also the fact that all my publications in English are now available as spiral-bound books rather than just as PDFs. …a girl’s gotta make a living after all.

But, in this blog post today, I think it might be nice to take a step back, have some “free” time and also think about some free resources that I have made available on this blog over the years. They have been around for a long time but perhaps we all need to be reminded of them now and then.

The first free thing I would like to tell you about is my tutorial on a weft-twining technique that I used to finish the following project…

I recently made some Christmas tree ornaments using the metal ribbon crimps that I normally use to turn my woven bands into wrist cuffs. I found that they also make cute little hangers for bands to swing from the Christmas tree. These are’t for me. I don’t do Christmas with a tree and all that stuff. These will be gifts.

The ribbon crimps I used, (or ribbon clamps as they are sometimes called), are one-and-a-half inches long. They come in various sizes and metal colors. I used weft twining at the ends of the little band pieces to stop them from unraveling. The weft twining is a pretty and practical finishing technique. I have used weft twining on other projects in the past when I have wanted to prevent unraveling. Using it means that I don’t need to twist or braid fringe or sew a hem. Below, you can see the multiple rows of twining just before the fringe starts on the place mats that I wove.

In one of the weave-alongs that we ran on Ravelry, Julia used the technique to finish the bands that she made into key fobs. The technique that I used to finish my tree ornaments uses four strands of thread to twine two rows simultaneously. It is quick and easy and fun. I do it while the piece is still on the loom as I find it much easier to apply while the warp is under tension.

So, this is one of the free things on my blog about which I can remind you…my tutorial on basic weft twining. The tutorial has video clips which show simple twining with two strands and then the four-strand twining that I used for my ornaments. It also shows photos of other projects where I have twined little patterns and even words. The videos show how you can use strands of two colors to twine motifs.

I have been weaving three ornaments per twenty-inch warp. My backstrap loom allows me to work on short warps. Twenty inches gave me three pieces for ornaments while also giving me plenty of room in which to work comfortably. I designed a set of Christmas-themed patterns for the Complementary-warp Pattern Book that I published back in 2018. I used a few of those for my ornaments but then I decided that any pretty motif would look nice hanging from a tree. So, I used a hummingbird and a flower pattern that I also designed. I will be weaving more and will probably give a set of four in different colors to friends. Maybe I can add a couple of new ones each year.

Here’s a tip I can give you if you are planning on making some of these: I prefer to make the band slightly narrower than the ribbon crimp. That way, when I enclose the raw edge in the crimp, I don’t have to be concerned about the warp ends flaring and peeking out from the sides of the crimp. They can, however, be tamed and made to behave with a little glue before you apply the crimp, if you prefer.

As you can see, the complementary-warp structure (in this case Andean Pebble Weave) that I used produces bands with two structurally identical faces with colors reversed.

Olyweaver has been playing with simple warp floats, a technique she learned via the free tutorials on my blog. Her Schacht inkle loom is allowing her to weave a surprisingly wide band. I love the calm, cool colors she is using.

What I call the simple-warp-float structure, gives you pattern on one face of the band and a lot of texture. You can see how the green floats stand out above the flat background of green and purple plain-weave horizontal stripes. My free tutorial on this structure is here.

It’s a nice technique for those who feel they would like to go beyond the basics of plain weave and take some first steps in pick-up weaving.

From there, you can advance to a technique in which both colors are used to form floats and pattern at the same time. Olyweaver is only using the green threads in her warp to form the pattern. In my examples above I am only using one of the two available colors to create floats.

My free video shows you how to create a warp for a backstrap loom so that you can weave these kinds of pick-up patterns.

In the following beautiful piece woven by Tracy Hudson, in which she used her own hand spun yarn, both colors are used to form floats. In the center section, red floats form the motif while blue floats fill in the background. This was woven on a backstrap loom.

You may remember that I showed pictures of Tracy just starting this piece when I got together with her on a visit to the USA. It is exciting to see how it has progressed since then.

Tracy’s piece has patterns from Central Asian yurt bands as does the band that I showed in my last post made by Olyweaver…

The traditional yurt bands only show pattern on one of the two faces of the band. They use a technique that produces warp-floats in two colors on only one face and I have a few free tutorials on that technique on my blog. This is the same structure that I used to weave the place mats that I showed earlier on in this post. This structure is used in many regions around the world. My place mat pattern comes from textiles of the tropical lowlands of Peru.

Here is the free tutorial for the S pattern band that Esther wove below. This is a traditional yurt-band pattern.

In my Complementary-warp Pick-up book, I show how these same patterns can be woven with two identical faces.

You can browse all the topics of my free tutorials here. And, may I remind you that many of the items that I gathered on my RESOURCES page are also free downloads.

Let’s see what else has I have seen online and in my inbox…

I LOVE this cotton piece made by Nettina on her backstrap loom! It’s plain weave and gorgeous!

My favorite part is the way she finished the raw edges of the cloth. I showed you earlier in this post how you can use weft twining as a pretty finish alongside fringe. Nettina didn’t want fringe on her piece and carefully covered the raw edges with coil stitches. This looks fabulous.

She has carefully spaced her coils so that colors can match up perfectly with the arrangement of colors in her woven cloth…beautiful!

If you would like to learn the coil stitch and other decorative finishes, I teach them in my book The Eye-pattern Tubular Band and Other Decorative Finishing Techniques which you can buy as a spiral-bound book or PDF at Taproot Video. I use step-by-step photos, drawings and video clips in my instructions. Both the PDF and print book allow you access to the instructional video clips.

Here you can see the little “pocket bag” I wove and later decorated with the decorative coil stitch. You can make the coils as a colorful contrast to the piece as I have done or have them blend in perfectly as Nettina has done.

Wendy made a hat band using a cute viscacha motif as well as one that she designed herself in Andean Pebble Weave…

And, while not weaving Christmas tree ornaments, I have been working on my latest ikat piece. Here it is on the frame while I was tying in the pattern with pink plastic ikat tape…

I dyed it using Jacquard brand acid dye in a color they call teal. The dye behaved strangely. When I have used this dye in the past, the color has been almost completely exhausted by the end of the process. The water is almost clear and I have to do very little rinsing. This time the water was very blue and I had to rinse a lot before the silk thread would stop releasing blue color. It seems to me that the blue part of this dye mixture simply did not take anywhere near as well as the other components. I ended up with a green that I am guessing is missing much of the blue tone that one would normally expect from teal.

I decided I liked it. It’s funny that I had very recently downloaded a photo that my friend in India had shared of herself with a friend. I had fallen in love with the green sari her friend was wearing and the rich colors of its pattern. My warp ended up being a green color that reminded me of the sari and gave me the idea to use earthy colors for patterning.

The aim for this ikat project is to include patterning with supplementary weft, not only bordering the ikat section but also within it. I have to stop looking at that sari because my piece is not going to be anywhere near as pretty!

I started with a row of supplementary weft motifs in various colors. The warp is 30/2 silk and I am using several strands of 60/2 and 120/2 silk as the supplementary weft. My friend Betty has textiles from Bhutan hanging on the wall of her weaving studio and I used a motif from one of them that I had photographed while visiting. When I get to the ikat section I will use that same motif s and add another to fit the blank spaces that I left between the lines of ikat pattern.

In these pictures the cloth is showing much more of a blue tone than it does in reality. After the first row of pattern, I scattered a few more motifs to fill the space before the start of the ikat section. Then I had to start cutting off some of the ikat tape in order to be able to advance the warp. I leave the tape on for as long as I can manage as I believe that it leaving it in place helps to stop the warp threads from shifting too much.

So, I have this on my backstrap loom on which to continue. Every now and then I take a break and work on Christmas ornaments.

December is the month in which I decided I need to go back to working on my next book. Let’s see if I can stick to the plan! A balanced-weave ikat project is calling to me….I need to work out a schedule where I can do both. I could happily weave all day every day, but as I said earlier, a living needs to be made too!

In my next post I hope to show you what I have learned from attempting to tie and dye weft for ikat.

Backstrap Weaving – From Experiment to Project

Just when I am at the point when I feel that I have learned enough about the behavior of the naturally-dyed silk that I was given to be able to move on to real projects rather than experiments and samples, I find that I don’t really have enough of this yarn left to be able to make anything decent!

These are the skeins of silk that had been used in natural dye experiments and given to me. I have used them to weave journal covers using a variety of warp-faced pick-up structures and, more recently, to experiment with ikat. If you have been following my most recent posts you will have seen and read a lot about my experiments in which I use multi-colored base warps for ikat. I wrap the warp in ikat tape to create a pattern. The taped areas resist the color in a dye bath and, when the tape is removed, a multi-colored pattern is revealed ready to weave.

Sadly, I am almost at the end of my supply of this naturally-dyed silk. There is just about enough to make one more small warp but I think that it is time to move on and try out the 30/2 silk that I got from my weaving friend Deanna in a swap.

The fourth in my recent ikat experiments with the multi-colored silk has happily changed its role from experiment to project. I warped up a wider and slightly longer piece and decided not to create stripes of random color and width this time. All the stripes were twelve ends wide and I used symmetry in the arrangement of the colors.

I divided the groups of warp threads to be wrapped in tape into twelve-end sections. This was going to be a very orderly warp. I didn’t challenge myself to creating the impression of curves or to create nice even horizontal lines. I went with bold diagonals instead.

Here it is out of the black dye bath and almost dry enough to place on my backstrap loom beams.

As soon as the first few inches I had been woven, I knew that this one was going to be my favorite so far.

A little further along and feeling really pleased with it :-).

And, finally, off the loom…a close-up.

One more picture (can you tell I am loving this one?!)

How would it behave once wet finished? I had high hopes that this would work as a cowl. I had used 60/2 silk as weft. Would it have enough drape? I love the wet-finishing part of working with silk. The fabric relaxes and almost oozes under the iron as I give it a good hard press.

I am trying to show the sheen after wet finishing in this next picture. It was really hard to capture.

And, yes! It works as a cowl. I am so happy that I can wear this piece! (This is what fifteen months of cold turkey grey-hair grow-out looks like, by the way).

It is just draped around my neck in this picture. I have yet to finish it. I have three selvedges and need only deal with one raw edge. I’ll cover that edge with fabric and use three buttons and loops to close the cowl. I need to make the closure decorative as I am pretty sure that the cowl will swivel at will around my neck as I wear it. The buttons could end up in any position and they need to be pretty. Once again, I’ll have to put my meager sewing skills to the test.

Another project that got almost finished is the silk ribbon that I made for my Koru pendant:

I have washed some of the 30/2 silk so that it can be dyed. The first ikat project with this new material will be a narrow one while I get acquainted with the way it behaves. I want to focus on a much longer warp which will be folded in two on the ikat frame. In that way I can tie the ikat tape in multiple layers at the same time and achieve a repeat.

My weaving friend Pam shared pictures with me of her visit to Uzbekistan many years ago in which you can see a warp of many meters length folded and placed on the ikat frame where the young ladies sit ready to tie the pattern. The beams that hold the warp under tension are tied to bolts in the floor.

I am absolutely in love with this piece below from Timor. Kinga Lauren who collected the piece, kindly allowed me to show it here in my blog post.

I love those curvy irregular patterns. You can see how the irregularities in the pattern in the lower half of the fabric are perfectly replicated in the upper half. The warp was obviously folded with ikat tape wrapped around both layers at once.

A close-up of part of the ikat section and the fringe shows the number of beautiful subtle colors that were used in the stripes. This is naturally-dyed cotton.

Wrapping multiple layers will be one new challenge for me. The other will be attempting to dye with more than one color. I tried a very simple version of this many years ago on a rather carelessly tied pattern. I really liked the effect and was able to use the piece as a book cover. I had some mishaps with this cotton warp. This was back in the days when I was using cassette tape for wrapping cotton warp. I made one of the dye solutions too hot and the cassette tape simply did not deal well with the heat.

So, on the heels of my happy cowl project/ikat experiment, let’s see what kind of mess (or success) I can make with 30/2 silk!

To finish, I have some nice work to show you from my inbox from new and old online weaving friends…

Shilpa Nagarkar Rao is weaving Andean Pebble Weave patterns using my Complementary-warp Pattern Book (after having learned the technique in my Complementary-warp Pick-up book). She uses an inkle loom to weave bands and then combines them to make beautiful bags. (See her Facebook page).

Bag made from several bands woven on an inkle loom by Shilpa Nagarkar Rao

Cynthia has been working with supplementary weft creating motifs in several colors along the length of the band. This ability to change color at will is one of the many nice things about this technique and is why Guatemalan clothing can be so colorful.

I love how Vanessa De Columna made what I believe to be her very first Andean Pebble Weave band into a headband.

In book news, my latest pattern book, which ended up with 132 charted patterns, is in the hands of Taproot Video and I am just waiting for it to go live on the website. The Taproot folk are currently busy shooting a new spinning class with Joan Ruane…exciting news!

Backstrap Weaving – Tying and Stitching

I have been enjoying some stretches of quiet time in which I have been sewing and tying tape onto a new ikat warp.

The sewing part of my reward time was about converting the long strip of cloth that I recently wove on the Karen backstrap loom into a table square. I cut the strip into five pieces so that they could be joined side-by-side into an almost-square piece of cloth, roughly 24″ x 24″. I think that it is something I can use on tables to display my workshop samples.

I wanted to lay the strips side by side and join them edge to edge using one of the decorative stitches that Bolivian weavers use when they join their woven panels. There are many varieties of these joining stitches and I chose one of the simplest one. The needle and thread follow a basic figure-eight path. The needle emerges from bottom to top a certain distance away from the edge of panel A. Then it dives down in the gap between the two edges of the panels and emerges from bottom to top the same distance away from the edge of panel B. Then it once again dives down in the gap between the edges of the two panels and starts again from the beginning.

I used this joining stitch a couple of times before when I connected wool panels to make lap blankets. Here’s one of the two panels of the purple blanket on the loom…

And, here it is connected to its partner with the decorative stitching…

I took care of raw edges by eventually covering the perimeter of the blanket with the woven band you can see below…

The red and brown blanket got the same treatment. Above you can see the two panels sitting side by side before I sewed them together.I used a contrast color for the join which made the stitching practical as well as decorative. This blanket also had its perimeter covered and raw edges protected with a woven band.

I guess the hardest part is making sure that the needle always pierces the cloth the same distance away from the edge. Cotton seems to demand a higher level of accuracy and I wasn’t confident enough to go with a contrast color for the stitching. I matched the color of the sewing thread to the cloth and the little inaccuracies give my stitching a fairly ”rustic” look.

Stitching in progress. There were four joins to cover.

I covered the two raw edges with cross-knit-loop stitches and left the two selvedges uncovered….

I kept the cross-knit-loop stitches as close together as possible. This gave good coverage and meant that I could just turn the raw edge over once and feel confident that the stitching would cover and protect it.

My other non-weaving activity was time spent tying a new pattern into my next ikat project. It’s another short warp as I am still at the stage where all I am hoping to do is learn and improve my skills before I launch into a ”real” project.

The base colors show against black in the last silk ikat project.

I again used the naturally dyed silk sample skeins that I had been given.

This warp is made of a different kind of silk to that which I used in my last ikat project. It is different in that it is finer, more slick and has a higher twist. I guess it more closely resembles the silk that I eventually hope to use in the real project, whatever that might be.

A major difference is that this kind of silk absorbed the natural dyes in a very different way too. The colors in my last warp were more muted and “sad” I suppose you could say. These colors are brighter and clearer….almost too bright for my liking and I might over dye the project later to sadden the colors if the contrast against the black dye is too high.

It’s the differences in this thread that are of interest to me. Will the fact that it is finer and slicker make it more difficult for me to achieve good firm ties when I apply the ikat tape? Will the black dye bleed under the ikat ties? Will the threads shift more freely out of alignment when I weave because they are more slick than those I have tried in other experiments?

To make it all a bit different to the last ikat experiment, I plan to add two panels to either side of this piece when the time comes to weave it. I hope to be able to weave motifs with supplementary weft in those two panels that resemble the ones I have created with the ikat tape.

When I posted pictures of my last experiment in online forums, questions arose about the tape I am using. It was given to me years ago by my weaving friend Betty. You can see a roll of it at left.

I don’t know where she got it from but the only place that I have seen selling anything that seems to be specifically designed for ikat is Maiwa in Canada.

I used cassette tape with some success before I was given the ikat tape. It worked very well when I was using cold water dyes on cotton. It failed in hot water, though. It held knots well but you had to be careful when pulling knots tight as it could snap. The ikat tape has never snapped.

Others in the forums have mentioned using flagging tape and cut strips of plastic grocery store bags when they have taken ikat workshops. One of the features I like a lot about the ikat tape is that it can be split and torn vertically into strips as fine as you like. I am not sure if that is a good thing if you are trying to use the entire width of the tape to wrap a very large area. I think it in that case that it may have a tendency to split when you don’t want it to.

This is probably one of the last ikat experiments that I did using cassette tape….

I know that you probably can’t make out anything here but this is the pattern that I am currently tying. I mark the pattern with a charcoal pencil and I use a paint brush with stiff bristles to “erase” mistakes in my marking.

I am finding straight horizontal lines the hardest thing. I tie each bundle separately and just hope that the plastic wraps line up well enough to give a smooth horizontal. I have been tempted to put several bundles together and bind them all at once but I know that if I were to grab my bangs in a bunch and cut straight across, I wouldn’t end up with a straight line.

The other thing I did in my reward time was to cover the journal with the last ikat piece and add it to the collection of little books with hand woven covers.

I was pleased that the three motifs in the middle ended up nicely seated on the spine of the book.

I have actually finished all the tying part of the latest ikat project. Now I just need to carefully inspect it and make sure that I didn’t forget any parts. You can see in an old experiment in the picture below that the top left motif is missing one wrap on its extreme left. It went into the dye bath like that. So, I will be looking very closely over my current pattern to make sure it is complete!

It will go into the dye bath tomorrow. Fingers crossed that all goes well!

Backstrap Weaving – Something from Scraps

I was motivated by the announcement that the summer 2019 weave-along (WAL) in one of the weaving groups on Ravelry would be “Weaving with Hand-dyed or Painted Yarns”. The WAL for the last couple of summers has been about band weaving and although I happily participated in those, this newest topic is much more interesting and challenging for me.

I decided that it was a good time to try ikat using silk for warp and started scratching around in my silk stash which includes cones and skeins of 30/2, 60/2 and 140/2 thread. I figured I would be wise to start with the heaviest 30/2 thread even though that still seemed very intimidating. I have mostly used cotton for my ikat experiments in the past, the finest being this one with 20/2s.

I was able to turn this experiment into something useful…a nice draw-string bag for my Kindle…

I had been using cold water dyes for these cotton experiments. Now was the time to take out the lovely Landscape and Jacquard brand dyes that I had bought a few years ago in the hope of dyeing wool and silk for some of my projects. I had all I needed: the ikat tape, the right dyes and a selection of silk from which to choose, but I still hesitated.

Ikat projects are such a big undertaking. There’s all the time spent designing and then tying a pattern, not to mention all the measuring and care to make sure that the pattern gets tied on straight. My eyes always seem to to tell me something completely different to what the ruler is indicating. Then you can never really be sure if you have wrapped the yarn well or tightly enough. There’s always a chance the dye will seep into the wrapped yarn and spoil the motif. And, finally, even if the initial tying and dyeing stages have been successful, you can never know just how much the threads will shift on the loom to possibly blur the pattern out of recognition.

The fineness of my silk in my stash was intimidating. So, I was quite relieved to discover in my scratching around that I still had scraps of naturally dyed silk left over from other projects. This silk is much heavier and seemed like it would be much more manageable for my very first ikat experiments with silk. I had been offered all these tiny dyed skeins of silk by a guild when the guild member who had created them had passed away. No one else had seen a use for them, but I knew that I could use them for small projects on my backstrap loom. This was what I was able to bring back home with me to Bolivia….

You may remember that some time ago I used them to weave four pieces which became covers for journals…

These are the remaining scraps I found in my closet…

Ikat Cat by Budi Satria Kwan fineartamerica.com

There are two quite different kinds of silk rolled up in these tiny balls. I opted for the heavier of the two for my ikat project and decided to wind a crazy multi-colored warp. I wanted to weave a piece that would cover a journal that I had left over from the other project. The warp only needed to be nineteen inches long to give me enough fabric for the cover as well as a comfortable amount of working space on my backstrap loom.

I was inspired by a picture of some fabric I had seen on the internet many years ago of the silhouette of a multi-color cat sitting on a dark background. I had saved it and kept it in the back of my mind. I wasn’t feeling brave enough to go for such an ambitious shape right now and decided to stick with some basic straight lines for this experiment. I had done some experiments with creating curved shapes in ikat some years ago too. They were quite successful but would have been even better if I had remembered to account for take-up when I tied the shapes. My circles had come out a little flattened!

I really liked the simple idea of having the multi-colored shape appearing on the black background.

Here’s the warp I created.

Next, I extended the warp on a frame so that I could start tying in the design. A friend lent me a small table that made a perfect frame for this.

Those light pieces of thread you can see in the picture are enclosing the sections of threads that will be tied. Most bundles were made up of twelve ends with a few evenly distributed ones that held fourteen ends so that I could cover the total of 270 ends across the width of the warp.

I wrapped the thread in ikat tape in several short sessions over three days. The frequent breaks are necessary as I tend to get sloppy with my measurements when I get tired.

Here you can see the warp off the frame and ready to be soaked before going into the dye pot.

Here it is after being rinsed and left to dry overnight…

And now on the backstrap loom, heddles in place, first section unwrapped and with weaving underway…

Rather than remove all the ikat wraps at once, I like to slowly unwrap as the weaving progresses. I feel that leaving some of the wraps in place helps reduce the amount of shift in the threads which gives a crisper design. I know that the shifting and blurring can be attractive but I have found that it is less so when the motifs have blunt horizontal edges as mine do. Shifting in motifs like these can sometimes create spots and/or lines of color that are totally disconnected from the main motif. The practice of not removing all the ties at once gives me a relatively small space in which to weave and operate the loom. I use fine swords and wrap my weft around a stick rather than the regular shaped shuttle that I prefer. I can slide the stick with the weft into a very small shed. I keep weaving until I absolutely can’t continue due to the lack of space and then I remove the next ikat ties to free up some space to continue.

Almost there…

I am hoping that I have planned this well enough so that the black squares in the middle of the center row of three motifs sit right in the middle of the spine of the journal.

Done!…

I am very pleased (and relieved!).

Ikat projects are always a big unknown for me. They can end up being a mess or a success. I’ll call this one a success.

It does seems a bit weird over-dyeing naturally dyed silk with chemical dye, but there really wasn’t a whole lot more I could do with the scraps of silk that were left in my closet except perhaps make some wrist cuffs. I already made the cuff you can see at left when I was sampling for the first set of book covers.

I am glad that this project still shows off the beauty of the natural dye colors.

There is probably enough of the other kind of silk that I was given to do some further ikat experiments. It is finer and slicker. Maybe I will make an ikat cuff or two. The more experience the better if I am ever to move on to my finer 30/2s and 60/2s silk thread!

I could have produced a very similar effect in warp-faced double weave without all the mess and risk. I was thinking about that. Double weave would have given me a thicker fabric for a start, which I didn’t want. Plus the two layers of cloth would not have connected in the areas of solid black. That can sometimes create a sort of ballooning effect between the areas where the layers are in fact connected. In any case, the more ikat I do the more confident I will feel about eventually reaching my goal of creating complex curved shapes…the kinds I wouldn’t be able to achieve in double weave or the other patterning structures that I use.

Now all that remains to be done is to look for some pretty paper to use on the inside of the front and back covers of the journal.

Between bouts of ikat wrapping, I started sewing together strips of the green cloth from my Karen backstrap loom project to make a table square that will be approximately twenty-five inches square. It will be another piece on which I can display my samples at my workshops. I’ll show you my progress on that in the next post.

And, this will be my last chance to remind you to make sure you have downloaded all your purchases from Patternfish. You have until the end of the month to do so.