August 2014 – Fiber Artisans of San Jose

August 24, 2014 – Indigo Dye Summer Meeting

We had a wonderful indigo dye day today. Frank Mikulastic and Sandra Kupper had items to dye. We have been experimenting with shibori folding techniques and tried some new ideas today.

Frank started with white cotton fabric. He folded the fabric in the long direction and then folded it into a triangle bundle. He then wrapped rubber bands around the outside to hold it together in the dye bath.

He dipped it into the dye bath 5-6 times and the fabric got darker with each dip into the indigo. (With indigo, the best way to get a darkly dyed fabric is to do multiple dips, not with stronger dye.)

Sandy wrapped her fabric around a pvc pipe and tied it with string then dip dyed it about 3 times for a fantastic looking diagonal stripe.

She also dyed socks and a t-shirt – both had been unsuccessfully dyed once before with procion type dyes. Both items dyed beautifully this time.

Sharolene’s Spinning, Knitting and Weaving

I majored in fine art in college and studied color extensively. Water colored landscapes and flowers cover the walls of my home. This study of color has helped me in many ways throughout the years and has followed me into fiber arts. In 2004, a friend of mine got me interested in spinning. Not long after that, I bought a spinning wheel and the rest is history, as they say. Today I have 5 spinning wheels of different sizes, 4 looms and an attic full of fiber. I have a blog on Google’s blogger website (although I don’t keep it up regularly). If you’d like to see some of my past work, you can go here. (I shortened it here with TinyUrl). http://tinyurl.com/pvkogg6

Some photos of my recent work are here:

Frank’s sock

We in Fiber Artisans have had sharing workshops to learn how we each warp a loom. One very neat trick learned was how Frank keeps his pattern and heddles straight and double checks for mistakes along the way. He counts out how many heddles he needs for a pattern, wraps all the others with his long sock. After weaving the pattern he double checks for any threading errors. If you do not use all your heddles or have some left over you know right then you have made an error. Easy to correct as you go along.

2015 CNCH Scarves

CNCH Area Five is responsible for the conference next year. As part of Area Five Fiber Artisans has taken on the task of weaving the scarves for all the teachers and volunteers. We are doing the colors from Monterey Bay Ocean that were chosen for the CNCH 2015 colors. Here are some of the first pictures of the fiber and scarves.

Six of our weavers have agreed to weave an 8 yard warp for a total of 6 scarves when they are finished. They each have 72 ends of Ocean Blue Tensil, 44 ends of Aqua, 28 ends of Jade and 6 of Jasper. The weft is either Blue or Aqua, they may place their colors where ever they choose. Each scarf will have a jelly fish placed on it in what ever manner the weaver chooses. Embroidered, felted, Theo Moorman technique. Innovation is the name of the game.