Conversations With Silk Thread

I have a great weakness for silk.  Silk fabric, even tiny scraps.  Thread, in all its manifestations.  Throwster's Waste.  Ravellings.  Cocoons.  Carded Batts.  Loving the tactile quality of silk has even encouraged me to take better care of my hands, which can grow quite rough from the day-to-day activities of washing, doing laundry and cooking, dyeing, gardening, even stitching on rough fabrics.

The most interesting quality of silk, though, is the conversation that come from winding the newly-dyed thread onto plastic bobbins, the wondering what the future of a thread might be and auditioning all sorts of scenarios for that future.




The box of Yellows is ablaze with happy possibilities-- the Yellow of sunlight pouring through a summer sky is tucked next to what must be a zinnia in waiting.  How many lumpy, bumpy things could come from the coarse silk-- a silk most unashamed of its rude beginnings outside of the mulberry-fed circle of elite threads?









Orange is not always for pumpkins.  Saffron robes of Tibetan monks, the day lilies growing beside the road in patience and peace, and the pale tints that run to Salmon and Coral all borrow from that much-maligned color.











Then there are the Reds, Empresses every one!  Not modestly pursuing a quiet place in a corner, but brashly pushing forward to take seats at the front of the room and making a lot of noise fluffing and shaping themselves as they are seated.  The color of boldness and power.  Of complete confidence.  Synonymous with happiness to the Chinese.










Moving from Red to the Violet family, we pass through fields of wildflowers, bergamot, field thistles, four o'clocks and coneflowers.  Delicate wild geraniums lean toward the shaded, quieter areas.  And Magenta dances through all these Red-Blues.











The Royal Purples take their place, waking sedately past all gathered in the room to seats especially set up for them in front of the haughty Reds.  Centuries of awe and obedience radiate from them, the color set aside for the rulers, movers and shakers of older worlds.  Even their diluted hues are noteworthy-- the moodiness of a stormy sky is here, the strike of a last, dying sun slicing through the darkening sky.








After all that tussle at the front of the room, the Blues emerge, a breath of tranquility and peace.  Sky.  Sea.  Eternity.  The promise of safe harbor and clear skies.  Moving from the truest hue to the shared Aqua Marines and Turquoise, recalling water and life.









The Greens spring from the earth beside that watery Blue.  Green of leaf, grass, stem, moss, mountain and curving field, where strong stalks support the heavy sunflower heads floating above all as they turn their faces to follow the sun.  Fields of lush grass for grazing animals.  Heavily forested mountains.









And so we have wandered to the Chartreuses who lie at the door of Yellow, the bridge between earthy Green and Blue sky, the first colors of the spring emerging after the long and almost colorless winter.







The Greys and Browns are the step-children of the color wheel, but really deserve their own kingdom apart from the hues.  From the sum of all colors, Black, to the almost-absent tints of Grey and Ecru, they are the toning mechanisms that give some dignity to the babble of the primaries and their offspring.

It is a wonder-filled thing to have conversations with a bowl of silk threads.

Silk Thread

Silk threads are a different set of dyeing techniques than cotton.  And linen, rayon, ramie and tencel all have their own rules.  I am navigating the silk maze now, still finger-painting, still in love with the colors that emerge by accident or design.  And there are a lot of interesting textures in silk, either 100% silk or silk blended with other fibers.

I did these boxes of silks in two dyeing days, though it took me several days to get the thread wound and tied into little hanks for dyeing.

The new bump in the road is finding a place to dry so many skeins.  They can't hang outside, even if there was sun every day.  They would collect pollens and airborne allergens that would keep me from using them.  And the space inside this house is all pretty well spoken for.

But all I need is a temporary drying rack-- no more new equipment!  And while dozens and dozens of skeins of thread soaked and waited to be rinsed and dried, I prowled around the downstairs looking for solutions.  The answer was folded up in a corner, behind a door:  my walker.

Think about it:  Light weight.  Folds away.  On wheels that can be raised so I don't have to bend down so far to claim the dry skeins.  And side bars for support.  The side bars can also be used to support dowels stretched the width of the walker-- dowels filled with skeins of wet yarn.  And because we have bookcases downstairs, we already have a de-humidifier in that room-- Bingo!  Here is a glimpse of the way I now utilize my walker:

Pretty expressive, isn't it, I mean, can you see how much I loathe the idea of ever again needing to use a walker for ambulatory assistance?

Several days have passed since that first attempt at drying silk thread there-- and I have made a number of improvements.  I also have an idea of using the Adorable's Legos to make a support for a second row of dowels to hang above the ones shown.  I always have an idea.  Making it work is sometimes the challenge.

The best part, however, is how neatly it all comes apart and can be stored out of the way when not being used.

Three cheers for Grandma!  Next is to figure out how the skeins can hop down on their own, climb into a basket or large wooden bowl and somehow make it up the stairs under their own steam . . .

Color, Thread, and Bethany

This little project of dyeing threads for hand embroidery has swelled to the point it has shaped the pattern of my days.  As the colors are intoxicating, I have divided dyeing into color groups:  warm colors in the morning, cool colors in the afternoon.  This way I can move along without dwelling too much with my favorite colors, to the neglect of the rest of the color wheel.  First thing each morning I begin rinsing out the thread and fabric from the previous day's work, one color group at a time.  Then to let them soak, rinse a second time, soak in more clear water, and a third rinse.  Some of the colors need a fourth and fifth rinse (I am thinking about the seductive reds and deep blues), but eventually the water runs clear enough to hang or lay them out for drying.

I do not dip the threads in dye pots.  I paint them with my (gloved) fingers, occasionally using a brush.  I do not want consistent color-- the commercial manufacturers are quite good at doing that, thank you.  I love the subtle variations of color in the skeins, and I have discovered a way of layering the colors to give a soft effect to the pastels.  A lot of work, yes, but the effect is so lovely.

As I rinse the warm colors, the resulting threads are like liquid flame in my hand, intertwined oranges and yellows both bright and subdued . . . scarlets and aubergines to make the mouth water . . . blues that recall the Georgia coast or the little glimpses of sky through the trees here at home . . . a shade of persimmon that brings memories of finding the fruit beneath a tree on the playground of the elementary school I attended . . .  All this in a handful of wet thread!

Dyeing is hard work, I have discovered.  So many steps in the process of setting up, dyeing, storing the threads so the color develops overnight, cleaning each bottle before it is returned to the refrigerator, the drips on the table (and me!) . . . and the long rinsing process the next day before the drying begins.  After the first several hundred skeins of thread were dyed, rinsed, and dried, I began to have second thoughts about doing this on a production scale for my Etsy shop.  And when I had wound the skeins of soft silk on little plastic bobbins, I knew that dyed threads would not be mainstay of the shop.  Some threads, yes, but not en masse.

Bethy has been my helper in sorting the threads.  At nine, she has a good eye for color and enjoys walking around the large table to lay the skeins in position in the color wheel we have made of them.  She is learning the difference in touch between the various fibers and knows the silks, rayons and linens go on their own special rings.  She and I are both tactile people and do an awfully lot of squeezing the bundles.  Last weekend she was so excited by the color and the feel of the threads that she cried out, "Oh, Grandma, I could do this forever!"

Her enthusiasm was the impetus I needed to dye two large batches of threads for her to sort after school today.  She allowed Ethan to help, and assigned him his favorite blues and greens to sort.  In this last day of dyeing, I also did some experimenting with black where even though I didn't fall in love with the results, I learned.  That is life: we learn by doing.

Enjoy this photo of our color study in the garage (no; drippy dye will never make it to the studio with its white floor).  Bethy is so careful to match hue and value, while Ethan simply wants blues with blue and greens with green.  Does this sound like a typical male attitude?

Hand-Dyed Thread

After an amazing Fiber Forum (EGA) retreat with Carol Soderlund at the Atlantic Center for Art (New Smyrna Beach, Florida), my love of dyeing has been revived.  Hand-painting threads and fabric is now set for "game on" status. As I have an embarrassment of riches in cotton weaving thread (a beautiful textural addition to many of my own pieces), I added these to my Etsy Shop. I have loved and used them for years, but when I began dyeing them, I liked them even better-- the colored ones overdye to form color families, the natural whites dyed in deep, rich colors . . .

I have one more thing to take care of before I start dyeing in my normal obsessive manner, and that is to present a program to the Knoxville Chapter of EGA next week.  Cynthia has been my indispensable guide and editor in setting up the Power Point Slide Show that is the heart of the presentation.  The program discusses the eighteen months the FreeStylers spent studying Jan Beaney and Jean Littlejohn's "In Stitches" DVDs, with our samples as the centerpiece.  We have been pressing against the boundaries of traditional embroidery in this year and a half, and the colorful and exciting results are quite worth sharing with other stitchers.

After the Tuesday evening presentation, the bottles of dye will come out.  Carol's class, besides being immensely inspiring, touched on the way to organize and manage materials and supplies for dyeing, as well as introducing a much-streamlined process from the one I have used in the past.  She has blogged about the class here.  Check out her very colorful blog for pix of the class and notes about her own work and teaching schedule.