it's going to be a long wait

windfall lichens. on the right vintage ones from 4-5 years ago: on the left last week's pick from my walk in the park. this is lichen and moss country.

the vintage ones  almost instantly turned reddish brown last week's are in the yellow stage.

my latest friend, gemini, gave me much more info  about lichen dyeing that what i wanted. however, it was unknown to me that they needed to ferment in ammonia at least 3 months to get purples and reds.hopefully dyeing will happen in late fall.

another new friend is snapseed. my phone photo editing tool was very basic and this app is photo editing on steroids.and free. 

neki desu

 

intellectual excitement

big time.

after reading this i started thinking. i have a tendency of going  in many directions at once. my problem is that i lack  the proverbial box to think .
this methodology of designing would neatly fit all present ideas in one compartment. the weaving, the look i want for the cloth, the recent dyeing and the colors i'm getting. not to mention the digital works.

can't really ask for more!

i took one of the murasaki colors and treated it following Alice's method and you can see the image. it is much more satisfactory than the one i had previously developed  using a fractal image because the repeat is  less distinctive.

 right, i was able to combine the recent dyeing and future weaving but i uncombined the fractals i had been working with and the future weaving. can't win them all.  that said, the method of working with colors and dithering them or applying noise or blur opens up a new front of  exciting design possibilities.

which one do you like best, the fractal  derived or this new one? pray thee tell.

have to get back to tying knots if i want to weave.

neki desu

make it or fake it color woes

 

i'm pleased with the weaving, very wabi, but the color......
the color is more like the left photo.but i want it redder.i really want "turkey red" madder. been at it for over a month and the best is this light cantaloupe. i'm aging some more madder with calcium carbonate as per this recipe and keeping my fingers crossed.in the meantime if i cant get the color i can make it or fake it, photo on the right. yep, more time at the computer with good ole ps.

last resource will be over dyeing with cochineal.

neki desu
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heavens forbid

it's not that i'm comparing myself to monet. it's just that the wisterias were so beautiful.........

have a great weekend!

neki desu
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the never ending warp-epilog part1

Starting from the end.i got 50 centimetres from the damask preset-see here and here Being a kamikaze weaver i don't know if i got what i was supposed to get, but it was fun and you can't beat that.Now, don't take the kamikaze reference literally :)!

This is an image of the curves developed on the liftplan

And this is the liftplan with the structure thrown :) on the graphic image. Even after coloring the image it doesn't show very well, but you can click on the image for a better view.An awesome system as the same curves can be woven in other structures!! Graphic blocks or graphic profiles.
Now i need to find how to use that bit of silk cloth. Ideas anyone??

neki desu


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creating seamless patterns

The P program has endless filters that you can play and be happy with. But you can go beyond and create your own seamless pattens. Note that the pattern generator filter in filters creates patterns but you can see where the tiles meet, therefore they are not seamless.

There are many ways of creating a seamless pattern.
You can start from scratch with an image do the tessellations and build it up.
There are also plug ins that do all the dirty work for you, so why not take advantage.
i'll show you how to use a nice little plug in that helps you with the task and it works with CS onwards. This mini tute presupposes you know the basics of how to handle the P program.

• First go to mehdi and download kaleidoscope.2 plug in. While there browse around as there are many cool and useful plugs ins.
• save it in a folder in filters.
• go to file new and make it 300x300 px.
• then you can draw simple shapes or scan an image.

We'll concentrate on a scan here to narrow down the possibilities into a manageable tute.

• get your image and copy it to the 300x300 px file you created.
• make any adjustment you wish.
• flatten layers.
• go to filters and look for kaleidoscope.click to open
• change settings by working with the sliders until you find something you like.
• adjust pattern size to desired by clicking the bar under the picture.
• click save.
• check pattern by creating a new file let's say 800px
• go to define pattern in the edit menu and click.
• use the food fill .voila!! seamless pattern background!
  

i'm presently working with lace and here's a rough run of my process in pictures.

(apologies for the last picture.a glitch prevents me from uploading one w/out th white border (GRRRR)

This is the base for many surface design techniques.
You can then print the background to any substrate, make a thermo fax screen or simplify the image and carve stamps.

Hope this is useful to ya'll :-)


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just another manic sunday

Have seven things/projects going at once. i'm on my last twenty centimetres of my weaving, started reeding for a loom controlled shibori, this time cotton. Dyeing two warp chains with shikon a.k.a.murasaki , two pieces of fabric already screen printed and batching, another already batched and waiting for some finishing touches and two more heat gun victims. Not to mention the dress i want to make.
As the saying goes, when it rains it pours.
In the middle of this frenzy i just happened to remember a passing comment on the rose photo that said it looked photoshoped.
Well, let's try that. By duplicating it and creating a contact sheet and then layers and filters and..and..

i got up to here

Warhol, but not quite.

i had downloaded a Warhol action, but half of the commands are in French and i haven't looked carefully at what they do in order to translate them and make them operative. Don't really know if that would work. Anyone out there reading this that has some insight?

i remember SharonB had a link to an application that warholized photos, but i got lost looking for it.

Anyhow since it's all out there i googled and got this link with a nice little application. Don't know if this is what Sharon mentioned. However, it's cool.
Uploaded the same picture and the application took care of the rest. One can even re shuffle until one likes the result.
Then one can save it to one's hard disk.

This is the result.
What do you think? Enjoy being Andy Warhol for fifteen minutes :)

Back to the loom. And have to check the dye pot too.

neki desu

here TIF 1

i decided to work on the Take it Further Challenge on a weekly basis and blog about the progress.This will give me time to think and develop the concept or colourway and still have time left for my other endeavors. At least it is my intention as of Jan 3rd.

For the first Tif i opted for the colourway because it has some greens and i've always have found it a difficult color to work with. The other part of the inspiration comes from Gunnel as she remarked on a comment to this post that the tulips looked like spring. Nice thought, the promise of spring days to come.

Double clicked on the colourway image and opened it in Photoshop. Then created layers
by selecting and copying parts of the image and assigning a color to each layer by using the flood fill tool. i also used textured background and added a very transparent color wash to it.

Next step was eliminating unwanted information, in other words flattening the colors and eliminating color areas.
And some portions of the photo were literally wiped out :) for the sake of composition and simplification.The textured background was also eliminated as this piece will be worked in a yet undecided textile form. But this will be next week's post.

i am still pondering whether the extra colors left, albeit being the same hue, but different values is some form of cheating. In other words should i just constrain the exercise to the proposed colouurway without further color additions?
What do you think? Opinions. please.

Oh and you can see the full sized photos here

neki desu