Monday, October 5, 2015

Cashmere corduroy

Starting with a ground cloth made of 2/60 silk made of about 10 different shades of green and beige, I experimented with some pile techniques: corduroy with ribs of cashmere and merino.


I bought surgical scissors with which to cut the loops open. Instead of cutting the loops under tension on the loom, I cut them after I had removed the samples from the loom. The cut pile looks like this: 
The loops are made from 6 strands of 2/28 cashmere in various colours. I mixed the colours as I went to achieve an interesting gradient. You can also see the strand of 2/16 silk in hand-dyed variegated teal, which I interspersed with the pile bundles. I will post another picture after wet finishing, when the bundles turn into rows of fluffy topiary. 



Sunday, October 4, 2015

Green Logcabin

There are few pleasures greater than weaving with yarn I have dyed myself. I bought a few kilograms of silk-merino, silk-alpaca, silk--merino-cashmere from the Chester Wool Company, and then dyed it using acid dyes in various shades of green. I mix most of my colours on the skeins themselves using a splashing technique that is practical only because I do it outdoors. 

Using my old Harrisville Designs 22" loom that crossed the ocean to join me in Scotland, I warped with alternating colours to make a series of log cabin experiments. This structure yields a colour-and-weave effect that results in micro-stripes in two directions. I like the structure because it animates the surface with coloured pixels that are optically mixed from a distance, as these two images show:




In another sample, I like the visual interest that my unevenly dyed weft creates:

To bring out the most dramatic features of the colour-and-weave effect, one has to throw two shuttles, first light, then dark, then light, then dark, etc., in what's called a pick-and-pick. The resulting cloth has contrasting stripes, with horizontal and vertical ones alternating:

The final experiment on this warp involved a black cashmere weft in a twill. This resulted in an optically charged surface and a cloth with lovely drape: