Techno Fiber

Monday was jury day at the Potomac Fiber Arts Gallery.  The theme for the new show was Techno Fiber.  This lent itself to a variety of interpretations, everything from weaving done on computer-controlled looms to a silk scarf with an image of a computer chip.  I'm going to give an overview of the show today and will return later this week with a longer discussion of one of the techniques.

The jurors selected three pieces for honors.  Masha Kosmos used an actual microchip as design inspiration for a soft silk scarf; hardware becomes soft wear!

Masha Kosmos, silk scarf

Ruth Blau used graphics programs for her design. She imported it into weaving software and hand wove it on a computer-assisted loom. Her hand-dyed warp yarns contribute to the beauty of her scarf.

Ruth Blau, woven scarf

Joanne Bast started with a photo, manipulated it several ways with PhotoShop and printed it onto fabric. She took the fabric to her sewing machine and hand guided the stitching with carefully chosen thread colors to create a fantastic wall piece.

Joanne Bast, Marshall's Point Light

Several other Gallery members entered scarves woven on computer-assisted looms.  Here is a display of several:

Various artists, Techno scarves

There's a wide range of patterning and complexity shown in these scarves.  If you want to read more about computer-assisted weaving, Larry Novak wrote a series of posts on the subject last year.  The first of these is available here and links to the later posts.

Color Choices

One important aspect of any work of art is color.  We respond to the hues selected (red, blue, etc.) and their values (pale, dark, or something between).  Many books have been written on color choices in art and we all have preferred colors for our clothes and our homes. This month, our gallery theme was Van Gogh's painting of irises.  Many of the members who responded to the theme did so by using the colors of the painting rather than the actual image of an iris.

Janet Stollnitz told me "I looked at Van Gogh’s painting, “Irises,” a number of times.  I liked the colors, but was unsure of what I could weave that would relate to the painting. Since most loom-controlled weaving does not easily lend itself to pictorial images as the interlacement of the yarns is horizontal­ (the weft­) and vertical­ (the warp), I thought in terms of color, texture, and structure of the cloth rather than representational images. In the midst preparing hand-dyed yarns for sale at the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival, I noticed a skein of hand-dyed Tencel that reminded me of the colors in the painting.  The yarn had shades of purple, green, blue, and a little yellow­–perfect!  A woven scarf would require more yarn than I had in the single skein.  Looking through my stash of commercially dyed yarns I spotted a cone of yarn that was a beautiful blue–sky.  I also found some hand-dyed purple and green silk yarns­–more irises.  I decided to “feature” the variegated yarn by not only making it a wide stripe, but also using a textured weave structure.  The additional silk yarns were narrower stripes woven as different twills. Wanting to emphasize the purple of the irises, I used a solid color purple silk for the weft.  Although my scarf doesn’t say Van Gogh’s “Irises,” it definitely was influenced by the painting."

Janet Stollnitz, scarf (detail)

Janet Stollnitz, scarf

Another artist who worked from the colors of the painting was Masha Kosmos, who submitted a bolero.  Though Masha often does pictorial work, in this case she used the colors of irises rather than their image.

Masha Kosmos, bolero
Photograph by Alexander Fedin

I also asked members of our gallery how they choose colors for their nonrepresentational work, which could be in any colors of the rainbow, when there isn't a theme that suggests particular colors.  Here is Janet Stollnitz's response to that question:

"Floris asked how I usually decide on colors for my scarves­, my procedure when there isn’t a theme.  Do I go my yarn stash and pull some colors that I like together?  Do I start with an inspiration such as a picture or a flower?  Do I start with the color wheel?  Working backwards, it is extremely rare that I look at the color wheel. Sometimes I am inspired by a picture or a flower.  Sometimes I look at my yarn stash and put together a collection of yarns that I think would work together.  More often my color selection is a combination of inspiration from an exhibit and what yarns are available in my stash.  However, my stash is easily changed as I often dye my yarns."

In my own work, art quilts, I sometimes start with a fabric I love and pull other fabrics from my stash of hand-dyes to complement it.  An example of this is "Spring View," which began with the mottled rosy fabric in the "windows."

Floris Flam, Spring View

In other cases, I begin with a painting I like and choose colors from my stash that echo those in the painting, though not necessarily in the same proportions.  For my collage, "Wind Dance," I started with a Rothko painting (Untitled, 1949) and chose fabrics in many textures–hand-dyed cotton and silk organza, painted cheesecloth, Lutradur®, and Gossamer–in the colors of the painting. 

Floris Flam, Wind Dance

Choosing in this way sometimes leads me to colors and combinations outside my usual palette.

Shades of Van Gogh's Irises

Monday was the Potomac Fiberarts Gallery near monthly jury day. SAll work leaves the gallery and an entirely new body of work enters. Each piece is individually juried for acceptance on the basis of artistic quality and technique. This month our theme is Van Gogh's Irises. While not all work needs to be theme related, it is encouraged. 

First,Van Gogh's iris painting:

Three works were singled out as especially outstanding.
Gretchen Klimoski"s hand stitched and beaded silk jacket "Iris in a Clifton Garden":

 Joan Hutten's "Irises", hand dyed felted scarf.

 And Roz Houseknecht's "Purple Iris", nuno felted wool and silk scarf.

Many more iris theme items include: Silk scarves by Lubna Zahid (hand painted) and Joanne Bast (stitched)

 Beaded Necklace by Zoya Gutina

Hand painted scarf by Anna Yakubovskaya

Pieced and stitched Tote bag by Beverly Baker

Nuno felted silk Bolero "Spring" by Masha Kosmos

 Wool Felted neckpiece by Masha Kosmos

Cotton Necklace by Kathleen Thompson
                                                                                                      
Iris colored Hand woven scarf by Janet Stollnitz

 Hand painted silk adhered to the back of a glass platter by Lubna Zahid

For the past 4-5 years, a spring theme has been a classic painting and it always stimulates the creativity of out members. Joanne

All That Glitters; Holiday Show

Monday the Potamac Fiberarts Gallery juried in our Holiday Show "All That Glitters---Is Not Gold". The variety of fiber and fiber technique with alternative materials is stunning. Here is a short overview of gifting items available, all hand made in the local DC/MD/VA/PA area.

First an overview of our treasures:

A multitude of Scarves and Garments just waiting to be touched:

The Hat wall, knitted, crocheted, fulled and felted, ready to warm winter heads:

Gloves and Purses:

And wall art to enliven your living spaces:

Plus critters to make you smile:

Come on down and come on in. For November, Joanne

Computers in Weaving–Revisited

In a post earlier this year, I talked a little about using computer software to design woven textiles. This month, I’d like to address some common misconceptions about using a computer-driven loom. Some people seem to think that if you use a computer-driven loom all you have to do is put a cone of yarn in front of the loom, turn on the computer and go watch TV while the loom weaves your scarf. Even weavers have a lot of misconceptions about this.

In fact, the computer does precious little. I’ll go into more detail in my next two posts, but the process of weaving on a manual loom and a computer-driven loom are almost identical except for one or two relatively minor differences. The advantage of the computer is not as a labor-saving device but that it allows you much greater flexibility in the kinds of textiles you can design. One could argue that using a computer-driven loom is more difficult than using a manual loom because of the wider range of design possibilities that it opens up for the weaver.

I heard a great analogy about this: if you wrote your Great American Novel using a word processor, would you say the computer did all the work?

So, next time, I’ll show the steps that weavers need to produce a textile and point out the small differences when using the two types of looms. The post after that I’ll show you why we have greater design potential with computer-driven looms and what that means for our designs.

(This month’s blog editor is Larry Novak)

Last Bead and Button Post

While many of us who use fiber techniques when we do beadwork, there was an artist and teacher at the Bead and Button Show who uses a loom to create masterworks of beading.  I was fortunate to take a class from Judy Walker in small bead looming.  I loved it and loved her clever "paper clip" loom which eliminates the need for lots and lots of sewing in of warp threads.  Judy had some of her work with her and allowed me to take pictures.  These are amazing pieces.  All of them were done on a traditional bead loom with lots of thread to cope with afterward.  The sizes were about 18" x 24" except for the "rose window" which was about 20" square.  The red rug has 47, 695 beads according to Judy and she should know since she would have picked them up one by one.  This type of beadwork is definitely not for the impatient and faint of heart!

 

You can look for some loomed beadwork in the gallery in the future but not in this size or complexity!  This type of exposure to new ideas and techniques is why many of us go to conferences.

A new "cloth"

There is more than one way to view/ use "cloth". This is a pin that my good friend Irene made in a class she took from Marilyn Moore. I believe that Marilyn started her art journey as a basket maker. I became aware of her work a few years ago at the Smithsonian Craft show--one of the most prestigious in the country. She makes and teaches jewelry and containers using woven metal cloth.

The "cloth" is colored using a torch instead of dyes but after that it is handled the same way as fabric--sewing (wire not thread), shaping (pliers not starch like liquids), etc. By thinking way outside the "fiber" box our members can come up with some very creative ideas of what constitutes "fiber and fiber techniques".



This is a piece of woven metal mesh (very fine weave) colored by gently heating with a creme brûlée type torch. It was then shaped, hemmed and embellished with pearls and crystals. A pretty pin in the making.

Location:Bead and Button Milwaukee WI

Travels of a Fiberholic

As I mentioned in my first February blog post, I weave, spin, dye, knit, do kumihimo, and mess around with just about anything else that one can do with fiber. As a consequence, when my husband and I travel outside of the United States, I’m always on the lookout for how other cultures work with fiber. This type of inquiry can lead me to interesting people and places and can influence how I work with fiber in my own studio.

Sometimes my inquiries can be as simple as finding a yarn store in in a city where we’re headed, as for example when we went to Copenhagen, Denmark. To find a yarn store, I consulted a great website, Knitmap, and came up with Sommerfuglen (which means Butterfly in Danish), a shop I could walk to from our hotel.

Sommerfuglen (Butterfly), a lovely little yarn shop in Copenhagen, Denmark

What I like most to find in shops when I travel is something produced locally. Happily, at Sommerfuglen, I found some undyed locally produced singles yarn (yarn with just one ply). Each package contained two skeins of the singles, which were quite substantially overtwisted. Overtwist yarns can produce interesting effects in both knitting and weaving, but that’s not what I was aiming for. Therefore, I rainbow dyed both skeins, plied them together to make a balanced (not overtwisted) two-ply yarn, and submitted it to our gallery for jurying. Thus, a little bit of Denmark ended up in the Potomac Fiber Arts Gallery in Alexandria, Virginia.

Later on that same trip, we stopped at Gotland, a Swedish island in the Baltic. Among other things, this island is known for a rare breed of sheep, appropriately called Gotland. Here’s what Wikipedia tells us about this breed. Images of sheep are everywhere on the island, including this:

Sheep as traffic bollard. This would not be a Gotland breed sheep, however, because Gotlands do not have horns

I was lucky enough, while in Visby, the capital of Gotland, to find a shop where I could purchase a small amount (500g) of raw Gotland fleece. “Raw” in the context of spinning fiber, means the fleece exactly as it comes off the sheep, with the lanolin still in the wool. Since I’m not fond of processing fleece (scouring, carding, etc.), I sent it out for processing after we came home. Now it’s ready for me to spin into yarn, probably destined to be made into a sweater vest.

Gotland fleece, ready to spin. Compare this to the photo of the sheep in the Wikipedia article cited above.

On a different trip, we found ourselves island hopping in the Pacific, more specifically in the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM). One of the islands we visited was Satawal, in Yap State. Yap is the one state in FSM where hand weaving as a day-to-day skill has survived. In addition, spinning a form of twine (for fishing nets and other purposes) is also done. On Satawal, the women weave, and the men spin.

The fiber the men use to make twine is a cocoanut fiber, and the technique they use is called thigh-spinning. The untwisted fiber is held in one hand, and with the other hand, the man rolls the fiber along his thigh to add the twist. As in all spinning, twist is needed strengthen the resulting fiber (twine, yarn, or whatever) and to hold it together.

Thigh-spinning twine for fish nets

Since I spin (on a spinning wheel), I asked if I could try. This led to great merriment among the Satawalese gathered around us because women simply do not spin. Note: I wasn’t very good at the technique.

The spun twine is wound onto a hand-hewn shuttle, which is then used while making the fishing nets.

Shuttle with cocoanut fiber twine

Netting shuttles are used in many places around the world, including in the US. Here’s a model that’s widely used in the US by tapestry weavers.

Both men and women in Satawal wear the same garment, a wrap-around skirt-like garment called a lava lava. Here’s a Wikipedia article on the lava lava. The women weave these garments, and the ones worn by women tend to be woven with bright stripes.

The weaving is done on a back-strap type of loom on a continuous warp, that is, a warp that wraps around the back beam and is tied back on itself. The back of the loom is braced against a wall, and the woman tensions the warp with a combination of leaning back against the backstrap and bracing her feet against the back of the loom.

Back-strap loom in Satawal. Note the weaver’s foot braced against the loom.

The weaving is done in a communal weaving room, and the women all help one another.

A problem that transcends international boundaries: one weaver helps another repair a broken warp thread.

On this wonderful visit to Satawal, I purchased several lava lava. Here’s one that I use as a table runner.

The narrow width defines this brightly striped lava lava as a child’s garment. An adult garment would be much wider so as to cover the woman’s thighs. While most women in Satawal are bare-breasted, showing a woman’s thighs is inappropriate in this culture.

How might these lovely striped lava lava influence my own weaving? Here’s what’s currently on my loom:

Shawl warp on my 40-shaft AVL CompuDobby loom.

This warp will produce five different shawls. The stripes will remain the same for each because they are built into the warp, but each shawl will have a different weft and a different treadling. Different treadlings produce different patterns, and different wefts can lend different colors and textures in the cloth. This gives each shawl an individual look.

Are these shawls influenced by the weaving I saw in Satawal? You decide!