I'm buying Catharine Ellis' book Woven Shibori. Partially because I do not own it and feel like I ought to... partially because Bryan over at his bloggeroo mentioned it and I read the post on google reader (about five minutes ago) and it occurred to me that I ought to own the book.

Another reason is that I am trying to do real shibori and the idea of doing it to six yards of dress fabric is physically painful to me.

WAH.

Labels: shibori, weaving VI, whine

Yesterday I went into the city to poke around a little. Boyfriend's birthday is this weekend and I've many surprises in order! It is exciting stuff. Aside from the surprises, none of which I can write about until after Saturday, a friend and I went out to lunch with her GentlemanFriend.

Do you like the complete lack of names? Me too.
Although I do really call my boyfriend Boyfriend/Bee. I dunno, nevermind.

We all went to Veggie Galaxy which was fantastic. Their entire menu is vegetarian, most of it is vegan-- all of the desserts are, in any case, and all of the menu items can be made vegan upon request. They've their own in-house vegan cheese. Who even does that? Oh, wonderful people do that. It is essentially a vegetarian diner, and they serve breakfast all day and they've a take-away bakery at the front. I didn't know that breakfast was served all afternoon when I went, otherwise I probably would've devoured something absurd and breakfast related, but as it is I ate a reuben.

It had slices of tofu, red cabbage, swiss cheese and love in it. It was served with potato salad and a little arugula salad. This picture doesn't do it any justice, haha, it was one of those meals where it just looked so pretty that I stared at it while eating the potatoes. Oh, then I devoured it in three bites. I eat very quickly, its embarrassing.


In other exciting news, my yarn arrived! It came in a frighteningly disheveled box, but thats fine because it was so nice to see all of the cones lined up happily!

Labels: food, shibori, weaving VI

So, here is the state of things:

Dyes: Ordered
Yarn: Ordered
Dress-Mock-Up: Reasonably assembled



This is a horrific, headless duplicate of the dress as seen on the pattern package. You should be glad I chose to write 'deep teal' over that hand as my lazy tracing job had it looking like a pterodactyl claw. Whatever the sad, congenital deformity the model has is irrelevant, though, as I've decided to go with an over-all teal color to the dress. I thought about doing an overall ikat pattern, because ikat is so freaking trendy right now, but do you know how that is DONE? I won't get into that right now, I probably will some other day, but I don't think I've the patience or ability to take on a full-blown ikat dress during a four month class... especially when I need to, y'know, pass. Oh, and I need these three credits hit the happy 120 credit requirement in order to graduate. #collegestudentpettyproblems

ANYWAY, I decided to do shibori. I'll be doing dye-washes on Tuesday/Wednesday and pictures will be forthcoming then... I'm just wading into the world of 'real shibori' so I'm a bit tentative.

My previous shibori foray was limited to the quick & dirty woven shibori. That being, where a supplementary weft is used and and tightened across the whole of the woven piece-- the 'rope' of cloth is then painted or dipped into a dye bath. After the dye sets and is washed away, the supplementary weft is removed and the pattern is revealed. You can read more about it around the internet, this page provides some good visuals. Woven Shibori is similar to traditional shibori visually, but since it is done on the loom it has less freedom than the traditional method.

Uh, traditional shibori uses knots, a needle, and sometimes objects and wood-blocks in order to achieve the pattern. It is all done by hand after the fabric is woven. This is the game I'll be playing. I want the dress to have a graphic pattern, something bold and eye-catching. The dress will be given a wash of a quarry/stone blue and then I'll play with the shibori pattern. I'll then over-dye the fabric in a bold teal.

My first shibori attempt was when I took a course on dyeing here at BSU in Summer 2010. It was pretty fantastic: We don't have the studio space to use sinks/tables during the regular semester, so having the student interest at the time to get a summer class to run was a pretty great thing. I wove a series of three shibori scarves, each in varying shades of indigo, and for my first attempt they came out quite well. A pair of them were accepted into the 2011 Student Exhibition at BSU, and one of those was also published within The Bridge, BSU's Art/Literary Journal. The third scarf was never published, it was the lightest in color. I mailed it out as a thank you gift to the woman who sold me my loom. She was a dear thing. ♥

Blah blah blah.

Each scarf was woven using the same white 8/2 cotton warp. I believe the sett was 24, but its been a while. The scarf on the left used the same 8/2 cotton for the weft, the center scarf used a light blue 8/2 tencel, and the darkest scarf used a pale grey 8/2 cotton. The pattern for the shibori was a bronson lace. I love bronson lace.

That center scarf is *so much softer* than the other two that I sort of fell in love with tencel, haha. It made such a difference in that particular scarf that I've been eager to play with it again since.

wheeeeeeeee.

Labels: dress, shibori, weaving VI