Tuesday, October 14. 2008

Fabric, string...and wind

It‘s autumn here in Germany. Days are getting cooler (and nights colder), leaves are turning...and falling. Actually, a lovely time of the year...if only it didn‘t mean that winter is on its way – and where I live that means mostly cold, gray, drizzly days will soon be here.

Oh well....but now it‘s autumn and Sunday was just beautiful. The morning fog (also a standard autumn feature) burned off by noon, the sun came out and it was warm and lovely. Perfect weather for an outing...but where should we go? Then we remembered, that it was the weekend of the local kite festival. Sounded like a good idea – and it was! The weather was perfect for kite flying – just enough wind (and we were lucky with our timing, later the wind more or less disappeared as I have been told).

The festival is held on open fields on a high slope above a neighboring village. There must have been a thousand people there when we arrived – families with kids, kite enthusiasts of all ages, kite-flying clubs from the area and also from further away (Holland, Luxembourg) – all flying kites of various shapes, sizes, colors, degrees of complication, etc. (I might mention that our decision to go was so spontaneous that we forgot our kite...duh!)

Here is a selection of some of my favorite kites:

Like a quilt in the sky.

Many of the kites were so imaginative, like these

"insects" or "wind sprites" or... whatever they might be.

It's a funny thing about kites – as soon as they are flying

and moving, they really seem to be alive. These two

were literally dancing on the wind.

This one looked like it had been painted (maybe silk painting?).

The tail was of some kind of sheer fabric that shimmered

when the wind played with it.

Most kites these days are made of ripstop nylon and fiberglass or graphite

poles, which make lightweight, sturdy kites. This kite was made of muslin

and bamboo which was beautiful, but which was probably much heavier –

and which was why it was just sitting on the ground...not enough wind.

This isn't actually a kite – it's more like a flying sculpture which is suspended from the

kite string of another kite. There were several such figures – seahorses,

penguins, an owl – and some were so large that they made large "bales" of

fabric when they were rolled up. The pull of the carrier kite much be quite

strong to not sag under the weight of such a huge amount of fabric.

Also not kites, but people who like kites also seem to like

other things for the wind to play with – and they probably

have lots of scraps of bright-colored kite fabric. The fabric

triangles are attached to rings (graphite?) and the points

of the triangles on the bottom ring are attached to one

another. They spin beautifully on the breeze.

When we were kids, we bought paper kites for a nickle (5 cents)

and had lots of fun flying them. When they were well established

in the sky, we cut (or tore) a slit in a piece of paper, hung the

paper on the kite string, and the paper slid magically up the

string to meet the kite. This man let 60 (I counted them) miniature

kits ride up the string of his kite.

We started with patchwork in the sky and now here's

weaving in the sky. In this case, I think maybe painted

on clear plastic.

Of course, this is just a small selection of all the imaginative,

colorful, intriguing kites that were being flown at the

festival. The next day we read in the paper that there

had been kites at night the evening before – definitely

something to look forward to for next year!

Written by Mary at 11:14 in Everything else

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Sunday, October 5. 2008

The question is...

...have I finished a UFO? Or have I just created a new one?

I finished weaving the wool warp that I wrote about in July! I didn‘t manage to weave 30 minutes a day as I had hoped, but I did weave often enough – even for just a few minutes sometimes – that I finished a few days ago.

Cutting a warp off the loom is a little like Christmas. It‘s the first time that you get to see the entire piece that you have woven – and in my case (because I didn‘t remember how long the warp was) it was the additional suprise of seeing exactly how much fabric I had produced. I wove almost exactly 5 meters (about 5 and a half yards).

Here‘s the fabric right after I cut it off the loom. I have to admit that I am quite pleased with the results – and, entirely unintentionally (I measured that warp years ago) the colors are IN this season. All the shops in town are full of autumn fashions in shades of purple, wine red, and gray. So, if I do indeed intend to sew a jacket from my fabric, I should make an effort to try to get started (and finished) soon....but more about that later.

The problem with weaving (if it is a problem), is that just cutting the fabric off the loom doesn‘t mean that you are done – not like socks, just hide the yarn ends and you can wear your nice new socks immediately. A woven fabric needs additional work (and in some cases, lots of additional work) before the project can be considered completed. So the answer to my question at the beginning of this report is, “Yes and yes.” Yes, I have finished the weaving, and yes, I now have a new project – turning my woven fabric into a finished product.

The first step of the new project is to hide yarn ends. Ends of yarns that broke during the weaving and their replacement yarns must be darned into the fabric (hopefully invisibly). This must be done, no matter what the final use of the fabric will be.

The fabric also needs to be washed. The washing relaxes the fabric – giving it a more finished appearance – and in the case of the woolen yarns I used, it makes the yarns “bloom” – they become fuller and softer. This process is called “fulling”.

I didn‘t want to wash the entire fabric without having a least a small idea of how it would behave, so some sampling was in order. I decided to cut 4 small pieces of my fabric to put through various treatments to see which final result I liked best. Handwoven fabrics tend to fray – especially fabrics that haven‘t yet been fulled, so before cutting, I stitched two overlapping lines of wide zigzag stitching and one line of straight stitch (over the area where the zigzag stitching overlapped) on both sides of each place where I planned to cut the fabric. (A small aside: This is a great – and very satisfying – way to use up all those partially used spools and bobbins of sewing thread that seem to accumulate.).

I stitched, then cut and had four pieces of my (so far unfulled) fabric, each approx. 20 x 20 cm (8 x 8 inches). I washed the first piece by hand in warm, soapy water, squishing it up and down and squeezing it for a couple of minutes. I then rolled it in a terry cloth towel to get most of the moisture out and let it dry. The yarns fulled nicely – the fabric was much softer and fluffier – and the piece shrank by approx. 10% length- (warp)wise and about 5% width- (weft)wise.

I thought that maybe I could full the fabric by machine, so I ran the other 3 samples through the 30° C (86° F) pre-wash cycle of my machine for 2 minutes, 5 minutes, and 10 minutes. I was surprised that there was no noticeable difference in the amount of fulling (or felting, I would have thought) or shrinkage between the 3 samples and even as compared to my hand-washed sample. I was getting ready to wash sheets and towels (at 60° C / 140° F) and figured, “Oh what the heck....I‘ll toss one sample in for the whole cycle”. This sample shrank by approx. 35% warp-wise and 25% width-wise – and felted considerably in the process. I was actually a nice, light-weight felt and would conceivably make a nice winter jacket....but I don‘t think I‘ll do that – I don‘t have enough control with the machine treatment. German washing machines are not only front-loaders, they also heat the water themselves so it is almost impossible to tell at what point the water is at which temperature and the doors are locked until all the water is pumped out, which makes it really inconvenient to keep stopping and checking if and how well the fulling/felting process is progressing. So no machine fulling.

I had one other treatment option that I wanted to check – brushing. I brushed one of the fulled samples on both sides with a wire brush. The results were very nice. A softer (and I assume warmer) fabric with the woven pattern still nicely visible. Would make a nice blanket. So the question is now, do I want to find a (hopefully) good pattern, cut the pieces and sew myself a jacket (or coat?) or do I want to brush 5 meters of 70 cm (approx. 28 inches) wide fabric on both sides, cut it in half and sew the halves together to make a blanket? Hmmmmm.... I haven‘t made up my mine yet. I‘ll let you know when I do.