The story of woven shibori

 Woven shibori is a technique that is relatively new to handweavers.  My first experiences were with Catharine Ellis and her book which showed me how to open a whole  new experience with my handwoven cloth.  The photo above is a piece of plain weave that came off the loom in a pale green.  Very mundane and not at all interesting.  What made it different was that I had woven pulling threads now and again in an interesting pattern.  Once my piece was off the loom, I pulled these threads very tightly and fastened them with knots at the selvedges of the scarf.  (Enlarge the photo so you can see the details.)

 The photo above would have been more instructive if I had shown this piece before I had painted it with fiber  reactive dyes.  But I didn't start my photo graphic study until after that had taken place. In the photo below is just how ugly it looked at this point in the finishing processes.

 

 

Sometimes, ugly ducklings do grow up to be elegant adults.  The finished cloth has a whole realm of color combinations in a series of elongated diamonds that don't repeat anywhere in the cloth.  The finished cloth is always lightly textured.  This texture can be pressed out, but I prefer to leave some of the ridges and valleys present

 

 

 

See a previous post on this blog about woven shibori for additional information 

Igor's Japanese Inspired Shawl

The Reno Fiber Guild is doing a year long study of Japanese Textiles.  Igor Raven started out with the idea of weaving a furoshiki (Japanese wrapping cloth) but wanted enough warp to weave a shawl too.  The furoshiki is still waiting to be hemmed, but the shawl has made it through the many layered process and is now a reality. 

 

The first step was to choose a draft.  The Handweaving.net has drafts from the Japanese book,  Orimono Soshiki Hen by Yoshida, Kiju which was published in 1903.  Igor chose draft 44385.  He wanted some gold threads in his piece, so he added another two shafts to the original draft for some plain weave stripes in metallic.  Also, there are 10 plain weave threads on each selvedge to form a border.

Igor's main warp stripes were 10/2 Tencel in bronze and red.  The metallic was a 20/3 thread (incidentally made in Japan) and he used two gold warp threads as one in the stripe between the pattern blocks.

He had planned the warp for 24 epi and a total of 611 threads plus 2 for floating selvedges (weighted separately).  That was 7 pattern repeats and would have used the full width of the special 26" reed for his Baby Wolf loom.  After he started weaving, it became apparent that the sett should be closer, so he resleyed the reed at 25 epi - thus losing that extra width he had planned on.

　

The weft yarns were two shades of lavender used in alternating shots - also 10/2 Tencel. These colors add an iridescent quality to the cloth when it catches the light at different angles.

Before washing the cloth the fringe was cut to 7 inches and twisted with seed beads added. Washing was by hand in hot water, wrapped in towels and then dried flat.

 It's a luxurious shawl - long and very fluid.  The beads in the fringe catch the light and sparkle.  A successful piece.

 

A little addendum to this post.  Igor's shawl won the best of the handwoven division at the Nevada County Fair (August 2016). 

Handspun Alpaca & Silk Shawl

One handspun alpaca and silk shawl woven!  What a long, long journey if you look at the dates on the handspun yarns I dug out to weave this piece.  Some of them went back to 1999 when I decided I had to spin up everything I had before I bought more fiber.  Notice that I didn't decide I had to use the handspun yarn before I filled my fiber coffers again.

I had a reason to weave the shawl.  There will be an alpaca event later on in October and they want alpaca fiber arts on display.  I knew I had black handspun - some worsted weight, some fine.  I also had a lot of black alpaca that had been blended with white silk - in singles for weaving, but for this project I decided I needed to ply it.  I turned it into a three ply which matched the weight of the worsted yarns.  Thinking thick and thin, I dug out some alpaca that had been plyed with colored silk, some two ply silks in mauve and two balls of finely spun black alpaca. 

In order to make the stripes symmetrical and since it is always tricky when you aren't actually sure how much yarn is on each of the balls, I started winding one inch bouts on the AVL sectional beam, starting in the middle.  Five inches in the center of the warp with mostly black and some of the alpaca silk, which is silver colored.  Then, I wound an inch on each side - two thick threads, two thin ones.  When a ball looked like it was going to run out, I could switch to another ball of something to make sure the stripes matched on each side.  As I approached 25", I could tell that my supplies were pretty well depleted and I stopped at that width.

I chose a 16 shaft crepe draft and for all that it shows, I could have easily used an 8 shaft crepe. The sett is 12 epi.  I had some 8/2 black silk for the weft and beat it very carefully, easing down to just about 5 picks per inch.  I was nervous that the cloth was going to be too sleazy, but at that point there was no going back. 

Once off the loom it did look sleazy.  I lightly knotted the ends of the fringe to keep them from getting too tangled, put it in my front load washer with just a tiny bit of dawn detergent and in the rinse cycle some white vinegar.  The setting on the washer is wonderful - silk and wool and it really is gentle.  When it came out of the washer, things were already starting to look OK.  I put it on a wooden dryer to air dry, twisted fringe and, voila, a shawl that is light, butter soft and very warm.  Sometimes you win in spite of your insecurity.