Daryl's Blog

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Project number two also involves yardage that was exhibited in Tampa at Convergence 2008 as part of the Ebb Tide Yardage Exhibit. This yardage is called Sandstone Layers, and like the previous yardage both are dyed to coordinate with palettes from my former Forecast Column from Handwoven Magazine. Both palettes were featured in the Jan/Feb 2007 issue.

I only have a bit over three yards left of this yardage, but it is 36″ wide. I used the rest of it for a window shade, which also hung in the functional exhibit at Convergence. If necessary, I am quite willing to cut it up for additional fabric to help the cause!

This fabric is handwoven rayon and cotton, from painted warps using MX Fiber Reactive Dyes. Woven on 8 shafts, this fabric is a combination of plain weave, twill, basket weave, and has a supplemental warp. I can see this in a short sweatery kind of jacket. Probably unlined. Stay tuned.

For those of you who have taken garment constructions workshops with me, you know I have always recommended HTCW’s Red Dot Tracer as a pattern medium. Sadly it is no longer available, but the good news is, Pellon has re-engineered their Tru-Grid pattern tracing medium, and it is now stable in all directions. I have tried it with a number of patterns and so far been very happy with its performance. I have changed my webshop http://www.weaversew.com/shop to make this product available instead of Red Dot Tracer. Thank you Pellon!

I received my latest issue of Handwoven Magazine in the mail yesterday, and found Syne Mitchell’s column Weaving the Web, the title this issue is Blog Your Weaving. Syne gave a number of reasons for creating a Blog, and the idea stuck in my head, so much I didn’t sleep the entire night. I was so tempted to get up and work at 4am, but I held off, and now, with the blog created, I decided this would be a good opportunity to cronical my creative journey with 6 new garments, portions of which have already been started, I’ll outline what I have so far in later blogs, and hopefully inspire someone else to just jump in head first and create with what’s at hand.
The first project is what to do with yardage I wove for the Tampa Convergence, where it hung in the yardage exhibit. I have 4 1/2 yards of 25″ width, very drapey rayon and silk, called Frosted Florals, woven with handpainted warps, using MX Fiber Reactive dyes, in twill and plain weave simultaneously using 8 shafts. There were three different rayon and silk yarns used in this yardage, giving it a dimensional surface.
The drape makes me think gown/dress, and I’ve been playing with a couple Burda patterns from my World of Burda magazine that comes in every month. I’m making the garments up first in a commercial fabric to fine tune the patterns and the fit. I’ll add photos as I get some one to take them on me.