This summer, I decided to focus on
working with natural dyes. For my first project, I've set up a linen
warp (strings stretched lengthwise on the loom), which I use as a
canvas for painting on with thickened natural dye extracts. Each
day, I weave off and paint on a new section inspired by watercolour
nature studies that I do during my walks around Nova Scotia.
Process:
After scouring the linen in soda ash (2% ) and cotton scour (5.5%), I've mordanted it with alum acetate (8%) and left it overnight in the bath. After drying the scans in the dryer on high setting I've dipped them into water mixed with a handful of wheat bran to secure the mordant on the yarn. Four days later when the scans were finally dry, I winded them into bolls. Then, I immediately realized that my scans were too large and had to few loops so they got really tangled. The warp that I winded was 4.5m long, 30/3 linen, 16 inch wide and 32 e.p.i.
For the paint, I used natural dye
extracts bought from MAIWA, which I mixed with a little gum
tragacan thickener, for which I followed the instructions on their
website. I also used indigo for painting. For this recipe, I mixed
10g indigo (agitated first with a little water and marbles), 20g Ferris sulfate and 30g calx. I found that this recipe works best if I
let it sit for a week before using it.
As I started painting and weaving off
the warp, I found that my tension was a little funky because I tried
painting on my warp with iron acetate, which weakened my threads
causing a whole bunch of them to break. Other then that incident, the
weaving goes really smoothly, and I don't have any problems with
breakage. I am weaving with indigo dyed silk in the weft, as well
using various yarn as inlay.
working on the warp painting:
