phalenopsis

i've always thought that one has to be of a certain age to cultivate orchids and wear pearls. So here is one of my plants in bloom. i'll spare you the pearls :)

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shibori tablecloth

Interrupting my humble loom controlled shibori attempts to show you this awesome piece of cloth.
It is an indigo dyed and shiboried cotton tablecloth. Needless to say i haven't had the nerve to use it. Just the thought of spilled red wine gives me a headache. Consequently it is displayed on the foyer sofa and it gets the looks whenever i go to my studio, just one more reason to get there :)
i bought this cloth in Tokyo at a shop in Ueno where they also had the most incredible array of obi cords that i saw in Japan.
By the way, the sakura trees in the park may be getting ready to bloom.

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loom controlled shibori-show and tell

Here you can see the process involved in the dyeing part of loom controlled shibori.
Some of the messages i got prompted me to show the dyeing part more clearly than what i had explained in the previous posts. The weaving here was very straightforward plain weave on 24 shafts and the supplemental weft was a twill.
The photo tute is pretty self explanatory and i will just add a few things :

• the fabric is silk and was dyed using Procion dyes and acetic acid
• stamping was made using pigments and Golden GAC900 and soft gel medium semi gloss; fabric hand did not change significantly
• as pigments do not dye they can be used to create an extra layer of color
• some more stamping was done using thickened Procion dyes

Something unusual happened here as the cotton supplemental thread took the dye very well.
Taking the slow cloth approach and instead of cutting the knots on both selvages i undid the knots and slowly pulled out the thread. i was gratified with an ikat like perle cotton thread that will be good as weft in another project. Two for the same effort. This is called energy saving and maximizing your resources :)


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Blade Runner, Memories and TIF

One of my all time favorite movies is Blade Runner and i believe, paraphrasing here, almost anything in life can relate to it. Take our case in question this month's TIF topic, memories.
The replicants, who are robots in a world divided into humans and replicants, are so human that they miss having personal memories. There is something very human in keeping memories, and sharing them. And in a very touching gesture they steal photos from humans in order to construct their own memories.
There's also a beautiful invocation by Roy Batty, the most perfect replicant about memories that is actually his death poem, as in ritual sepukku.

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser gate. All those moments will be lost in time like tears in the rain. Time to die." (Roy)

i hope to have enticed you to look for the movie and watch it. i usually do not go for sci-fi, but this one goes beyond that label. It is a cult movie. And it's a treat to see a young Harrison Ford :)

As for me i kept working some more along the boxed memories metaphor using knitted wire. Don't know if it happens to you but once i get going with the concept i can't stop, had a couple more half finished projects for last month. However, i'm doing a lot of loom work now so i'm done for this month's TIF.

i was looking here for simplicity and i think i can't simplify more than this piece.
Game over.

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loom controlled shibori memories for TIF

i remember being five or six sitting in my grandmother's living room waiting in anticipation for uncle Erasmus to arrive from one of his trips. Can you believe his name? He was my grandmother's brother and my great grandfather had named the kids Erasmus, Virgil and Homer. They missed a Dante. It was a girl, my grandma.
He was a great traveler and had all those stories to tell , so the family would gather around him and listen spellbound. Distant places, different rites, other languages i think he imbued the wander lust in me.
i also remember when i was around nine or ten my parents gave me the book Around the World in 2,000 pictures. Being an only child at that time, i would spend days and days examining the black and white photos and dreaming of being there. There were two that, heavens know why, called my attention most of all and made them very special to me.

One was of human towers, men standing on each other's shoulders forming single pillars. There was another variety that was pillar within pillar, the base being like a hurdle to support all that weight.
The other was a picture of the strangest building that i had ever seen. It was a stone boat like structure with a turret docked in the water . i wanted to know why would someone build a boat in stone, yet put it in the water. At that time i didn't know, but that was an oxymoron.

i remember watching Rome Adventure with Troy Donahue and Suzanne Pleshette and dying to get her hairdo and go to Rome.Troy Donahue, o.k. if i got him, but what i really wanted was to go to Rome and walk those streets and see those colors.

Fast forward to the seventies when i lived in Rome. i remember those colors and the discovery of light, changing light during the day and over the seasons. Coming from the tropics where light is always the same, blinding, it was a revelation.

Many moons later i came to Barcelona for weaving reasons and was surprised to find the human towers were part of the Catalan folklore. i began to have a floating feeling, that of having closed a circle. And i stayed here.
And yet more moons afterwards one day while walking along the Tejo in Lisbon i saw the fascinating odd structure of my childhood. The Tower of Belem! i had to explain my husband what was all that excitement about lest he think that i was suffering from heat stroke.


All those memories neatly packed in boxes.

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loom controlled shibori

Here's take one finished. Aiming at getting mokume (woodgrain) shibori with those zig zags. The stamped red motifs will not dye, so they will act as extra visual texture.

Here's the second one in a diamond pattern. i stamped the warp with Pebeo soie paints in a square grid pattern. The weft is a washed denim blue silk and i'm thinking of discharging some parts and then dyeing. The warp is this silk, beautiful doupioni to look at, difficult to work with as it is fuzzy.

Loom controlled shibori offers an enormousist of possibilities. One can:

• weave in white and then dye
• weave with a colored warp and then dye
• weave with a white warp and a colored weft and then dye
• weave and discharge and then dye
• stamp with paints weave and dye
• stamp with fiber reactive dyes weave and dye
• stamp with fiber reactive dyes, discharge, weave and dye

and lots of other combinations.

As the weavings im working on are just 20 x 20 centimeters i am aiming at using this project as my February TIF hence the printed square grid. Squares are flattened boxes aren't they? :)
The caveat is that when weaving i use that time to do some hard thinking-thinking without obligation- and i would also like to work on a dimensional piece for the challenge.
Yet here i am blogging. Better get back to the loom or March will get me in front of the computer.

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mail today

Last Thursday i got my books from Amazon, and look what i got in the mail today!
I traded ATC with Susan Lenz of Cyber Fiber Exhibit. Check out the ACTs for trade here gorgeous works!

Moving on to other matters my loom controlled shibori is progressing. I finished the first one and was anxious to cut it off the loom and start dyeing, but the warp isn't very long and i would be wasting precious silk. Judiciously i've postponed the cutting off until i finish all the warp. A feat when i'm so geared.

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going home

After a long hiatus i'm back to the loom, my take on slow cloth.
It is always a source of amazement and joy to discover that i am at my best while weaving.
The past year has been one of little loom work and a lot of exploration of new techniques, and that entails some risks. Like dilution and delusion.
The Saran wrap came in the shape of thisbook that will enable me to weave it all together in one piece. i'm so excited that you will have to pardon the pun :)

Basically what one does is weave adding a supplemental thread that then is gathered tight and the cloth is dyed creatig shibori patterns.
From then one is on one's own and can add or subtract as will. Printing, stamping discharging, overprinting, foiling...
As i see it the beauty is that one is creating the cloth that will be acted on.
This looks like a series.

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boxed

Started with hand drawing, not my forte.

photo1 photo2

Switched to something i think i'm more skilfull at.

Development of the photos. What a great tool Photoshop is!

Photo 1

Photo2

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boxes, boxes tuppence, and other things

i felt the urge to work on a whole piece after doing tests and trials for a week or more. i had also been testing Bondaweb and Misty Fuse that i got in a care package from my fairy godmother. Guess i'll have to give her a tag as she's a recurrent presence here:) The first piece is the lower photo, an exercise in excess, even for me:) i used every resource on hand as a game to see if i
could o.d.and how.You judge.
The second photo which is the first one in this post shows the work i did trying out restrain and wabi-sabi to see if i could do it. It seems that when i want i can :)
As i incorporated knitted copper wire in both pieces i thought it would be fun to name them two penny. Or perhaps tuppence?

Other matters.

Yesterday in jest i commented on the Take it further for February challenge page that i had the chance of using my memory selectively as the theme was memories. i started thinking along those lines and thought of all those boxes that we( or should i speak for myself?) use to store things. Or memories which is what things most of the times stand for.
There are big opaque boxes, transparent ones in smaller sizes. Boxes made of lead, plastic,wood,cardboard, fur lined, silver lined..You name it. Somewhat later i got a message from Marie honoring me with the you make my day award.
Among other kind things said she mentioned that she perceived me as thinking outside the box.

Then i was uploading these photos to Flickr and noticed my tendency of late to let sheer fabric spread and wander outside the boundaries.
The first photo has notes on it and those are indicated by boxes. HMM, the box topic again!
It would be foolish to ignore the signs so i'm working the February challenge using the box as metaphor. There's still some tuning to be done , but it's only 02/02.

Moving onVivian of Vivian-in-stitches has tagged me and i have to mention 7 things about me and tag 7 people.
i'll think about the 7 facts and 7 people and post about it next week.With rules and all :)

This is the longest post in the history of this blog and DH is getting impatient bcause we have to do the groceries. Better sign off.

neki desu

stitching friends

The postman made me happy on Wednesday.Look what he brought.
This is a truly wonderful work of stitchery made by Elisabeth of Quieter moments It is full of rich details and you can see the impeccable craftsmanship.Thank you Elisabeth!

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