Post #3245: Summer Textile School Weeks 1 & 2

These posts may be of limited interest to some who read this blog, but since I use this space to document my own process, I will be posting “Summer Textile School” updates for the next couple of months.

To recap: I am spending the next 12-15 weeks with an intensive textile focus using study materials from The School of Sweet Georgia for Natural Dyeing and Jane Stafford’s School of Weaving for Colour and Design experimentation. In July and August I have taken additional days off work (mostly every Monday, with some others thrown in here and there) to spend focused time in the textile studio.

Each week I will find some time to post my activities here, with photos of what I’m working on. This is as much a record for me as anything.

Dyeing activities

Dye space and materials

• Set up outdoor dye studio
• Gathered all materials from my cupboard stash and organized them
• Bought some second-hand pots and stainless steel spoons, a gram scale, and a laundry rack as well as some dowelling and PVC pipe which I will use to create a yarn-drying station.
• Organized all natural dyeing books, dye and weave notebooks, and old textile course materials into one crate for easy reference
• Ordered a bunch of bare wool/silk blend yarn for projects
• Watched two of three modules of caitlin ffrench’s Natural Dye Workshop.

Materials prep

• Scoured and mordanted with alum a number of mini-skeins of handspun Merino wool that were in the stash (Brian spun these several years ago)
• Scoured, mordanted, and wound Cotswold wool warp for eventual hand painting
• Next: Scour and mordant hemp/cotton yardage and some white/off-white cotton for experimenting with.

Rhubarb leaf mordant

• Harvested rhubarb leaves and simmered them into a vat of oxalic acid.
• Read about the dangers of ingesting oxalic acid so I would have a healthy understanding of the poison level. It’s very high! Made sure I used mask, gloves at all times and scrubbed the hell out of everything when I finished cooking and straining. 
• Next: decant into glass jars and calculate percentage of plant to water.

Weaving activities

• Watched Season 2, Episode 1 of JST Weaving School materials and inventoried 8/2 cotton for projects
• Picked up old (and not awesome) J-made table loom from a friend who borrowed it two years ago and stored it in an outdoor shed over the winter. Cleaned it up with Feed n Wax.
• Warped J-made loom to see if it’s usable – turns out it could work for sampling, and also I forgot that it’s one I like weaving while standing up (it has treadle attachment)
• Currently watching Season 2, Episode 2 of JST Guild materials and working through exercises
• Winding 6-yard warp for Episode 2 sample (Asymmetry)
• Next up: Wind 6 yard, 400 end cotton warp for hand painting – in 50-100 end bouts