Surface Design in Handweaving

I learned to sew as a youth of the 70-80’s. One of my first sewing projects was designing and sewing a grosgrain ribbon plain or tabby weave pillow. I was really interested in weaving and design at an early age! In the late 70’s the Surface Design Association was formed. Surface design was defined as “the coloring, patterning, structuring, and transformation of fabric, fiber, and other materials.” Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada examines Shibori The Inventive Art of Japanese Shaped Resist Dyeing (1983) as an approach to surface design.

Inspiration sometimes comes during the creation of handwoven cloth! While weaving ikat, I thought what if I could enhance the design by using a secondary dye and using the methods of woven shibori. Catherine Ellis refers to using fiber reactive dyes in her first edition of Woven Shibori. I have both editions of Woven Shibori and have been fortunate to tour her studio in 2022.

Three separate ikat warp projects were used for this study in addition to multiple fabric samples. I wanted to be able to preserve the subtle nature or water color effect of the indigo blues (fiber reactive dyes) that occurred between sections of ikat resists as shown. One of my personal goals is to create “complex cloth” as I have also taken a course with Jane Dunnewold. Jane refers to using sodium alginate to thicken the fiber reactive dye as one of many methods in transferring dye to fabric.

My first attempt used a gritty paste I created by slowly adding a teaspoon of water to a combined soda ash fixative and indigo blue dye powder in a 3:1 ratio. I used small portions and rinsed out after two hours to achieve a pastel effect (last photo). After further researching (Jane Dunnewold), I decided to make a chemical solution using Dharma’s Cold Batch Method of fabric painting and was also very pleased with results. I applied fabric buffers and painted only sections of Shibori gathered sections to create a surface design on large ikat sections. The photo shows a sample of chambray Tencel test fabric. Results have been recorded in my Dye Journal.

This same method was also used with a strong navy fiber reactive dye in an all over fashion. Strong navy was one of the dyes used in the previously dyed (ice dyed) warps. I was pleased with these results also. My ground weft was an 8/2 gray blue Tencel so it was also overdyed with the strong navy cold batch mixture. Excited to launch these pieces as part of my featured artist exhibit at the Orchard Gallery of Fine Arts in September 2024 along with a new weaving and dyeing course!