Ikat love

My good friend Sara emailed me this weekend to ask if I knew of any good sources for ikat fabric. Ikat seems to have gained a bit of a following lately. For those of you who aren't familiar, ikat is a type of resist-dyed weaving that originated in Indonesia. The warps and/or wefts are resist dyed with one or more colors prior to warping and weaving. It is quite an advanced weaving technique that can result in the most beautiful fabric.

I was lucky enough to see some ikat weavers in action two summers ago at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington DC. The picture below shows the resist dyed threads (not sure if these are warps or wefts, I'd guess warps?). I find it staggering to try to imagine how to create a particular pattern this way...


...let alone the skills it must take to get the design to actually line up properly while weaving:


I have no idea how she kept track of all those bobbins.

In my search this weekend I actually found quite a lot of fantastic ikat fabric. I'm sharing it with you so that I can hopefully inspire more of you to make something of ikat fabric, because I'm dying to see all of these in action.

From Batik Tambal, 100% cotton, made in India.

Mmm...madras ikat, from The Cotton Club.

Silk Shoi fabric from Uzbekistan, Uzbek Applied Arts

Cotton ikat, Uzbek Applied Arts (remarkably good price for 10 feet of fabric!)

More Silk Shoi fabric from Uzbekistan, Uzbek Applied Arts

Resist dyed fabric

Oi! It's been a very long time since my last post. For those of you still in school, or who remember those days, you'll understand that the time between Thanksgiving and the Winter holidays is difficult. Luckily, the end is in sight! I finished my independent study on resist dyeing techniques, and have been putting my project binder together. It includes 55 pages filled with fabric swatches and library research on resist dyeing in Africa, India, Japan, and Indonesia. Last weekend I set up an indigo vat by myself for the first time. It took a little trial and error, but in the end I got good results for my starch resists. I found a very detailed indigo vat tutorial online here, for those of you who might like to try this someday. I would suggest setting it up outside or perhaps in a basement or garage. It's messy, and not something you want near anything you care about or might eat.

Here are a few images of some of the textiles I made:

Board clamped resist

Starch resisted king

Starch resisted elephant

I hope to make a triumphant return to sewing in January. I have this Burda dress on queue, as well as this Burda skirt. My Demi sweater is now almost half finished, and looking great!

Mmmm....fabric!

I just got this lovely fabric in the mail from Sheree! She really has an eye for fabric combinations. Check out her new store--especially if you live in Europe and like to support individuals rather than big fabric stores.

As for me, I've been terribly busy with school work--it's getting to that stressful time of year where many large projects are due. I haven't had any time for sewing--despite the several projects that are ready to be cut. Demi is progressing at the rate of several rows a day. I'm almost up to the arm shaping on the back piece. Perhaps I'll finish in February or so...

In the mean time, I'm still working on resist dyeing techniques. I haven't photographed much of my shibori yet (some came out quite nicely). But here is the starch resist pattern I was printing this weekend. It's a Nigerian king taken from a lovely book on African Textiles. I hope to get an indigo vat going next weekend.

Laboratory refashion and other creative outlets

Things have been getting pretty busy around here, but I have managed to do a few creative things in the past couple weeks. Between clothing projects, I decided to do a little refashion for my workspace. In the lab where I work, we have these fume extraction vents at our benches, so we don't have to breathe in solvents while we work. They are covered when not in use. Formerly, they had been using ratty old pieces of mat board as covers:


I was pretty tired of looking at these every day, so I made a fancy prototype for new fabric covers. There is a piece of mat board inside, so it is sturdy and acts as a good cover, but I hope you'll agree that this is much nicer to look at:


I used some African fabric from my stash in a bright orange, printed 'batik' pattern. I'm hoping to make a whole bunch of these covers so that everyone in the lab can have them.

I've been doing an independent study on resist dyeing methods, and recently tried my hand a batik. I turned my entire dining room table into a lightbox, which saved me some tracing time:


I haven't been successful yet with the batik--I need to figure out how to get the wax to penetrate the fabric well, without running all over the place. As another aspect of this project, I have been experimenting with starch resists. This type of resist is used in Nigeria, as well as Japan--and probably some other places as well. I bought a product called Inkodye from Dharma Trading Company, which said it was a cassava starch paste resist--which is what they would have used in Nigeria. I cut stencils from sheets of Mylar based on some Nigerian designs. Here are a couple elephants:


Unfortunately, I managed to kill the elephants by using this method with a synthetic dye (Procion). The starch is semi-water soluble, so it can't withstand long soaks. The directions say to apply the dye, rather than immersing it. However, I'm thinking that this might work in an indigo dye bath, since that involves repeated dipping, rather than soaking. This would have likely been the process used in Nigeria. Stay tuned for updates on how that goes!

Finally, at the request of a friend, I attempted to make fudge for the first time:


Being ambitious in the kitchen, I decided to make it totally from scratch, thermometer and all! I used a recipe from Alton Brown, but something went wrong and it ended up soft and grainy. I then tried again using a simple recipe from the Joy of Baking website (which has excellent recipes). The recipe I used called for sweetened condensed milk, chocolate, butter, and vanilla. It was easy as could be, and came out delicious and creamy. Keep it in mind for a hostess or holiday gift.

Indigo Workshop

On Saturday, I participated in a wonderful workshop on indigo dyeing. We learned some traditional and modern Shibori techniques--and had a lot of fun in the process. Shibori is the Japanese art of bound resist dyeing. It is sometimes called tie-and-dye in English, but it actually involves much more than what some of us did in summer camp. Our teacher was Darius Homay, an artist based out of Honolulu, Hawaii. Above are vats of indigo, and below are some examples of our creations. I was very happy with what I made--it's really quite remarkable how a simple technique, or
set of techniques, can produce such an endless variety of patterns. Some of our work from class is currently on display at The Arts Scene in West Chester, PA. I'm planning to do more Shibori in the coming months, and will try to post more pictures of the various patterns I'm able to create. I can see some of these ending up as wide trims on flowy skirts.