53: The Joy of Polyester with Holly Brackman (transcript)

WeaveCast 53: Polyester (transcript)

 

Hello, and welcome to WeaveCast. This is episode 53, The Joy of Polyester with Holly Brackman.

 

This is my first poscast since the summer hiatus and I just have to say that I am delighted to be back in the studio. It was good to take the time off. I wandered around and had many, many adventures. 

 

I taught all over the country, I visited with far-flung family. There were some major projects going on at home.

 

It was an exciting, busy time and I really needed the time off. It was the first time in the four years that I’ve been doing the podcast that I took a large chunk of time and it was good to have that time and it is great to be back.

 

If you want to know what I was up to over the summer I wrote a blog post called What I Did Over The Summer, 2010.

 

You can find that on the http://www.weavezine.com website under Syne’s blog. If you want to get their faster you can use the search box. Either works.

 

This episode we’ve got an interview with Holly Brackman who is primarily known for her surface design but she’s also a weaving instructor and we’re going to talk to her about doing exciting things with synthetic yarns. 

 

Following that we’ll have an audio essay called My New Favourite Yarn – Polyester?

 

Before we get into the interview I’ve got a few bits of news. First of all I’ve got a word from our sponsor for this episode, which is Bonnie Tarsus. Bonnie is sponsoring this episode in celebration of 50 years of handwoven artistry. She’s been weaving for 50 years. Congratulations Bonnie!

 

When Bonnie heard that the Dali Lama was coming to Arly, Montana in 2011 to bless the completion of the Garden of 1000 Budhha’s she decided to visit the garden and weave the Dali Lama’s horoscope on site as a fund raiser to help contribute to the completion of the garden.

 

An unexpected result of the weaving was that Bonnie packed up her looms and is moving back to Missoula, Montana. She is offering a copy of the Dali Lama’s colour horoscope winding draft for the special price of $25.00. To contribute to this exciting project go to her blog, http://weavingspirit.blogspot.com and click on the donation button and enter the dollar amount.

 

All profits will go to support the garden. We’ll have a link to that on the show notes.

 

Thank you Bonnie for your support.

Now I have a plug for one of my own projects. I talked today to Susanne Peterson who is one of the organizers of the Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat. If you’re not familiar with this it is a wonderful event. It’s held in February in Tacoma, Washington.

 

It is just fabulous. I’ve gone there for many years. This upcoming February I will be teaching two brand new classes. Classes I have never taught anywhere before and they are ones that I am very excited about.

 

The first one is e-textiles for knitters and weavers. In this class we’ll be learning how to incorporate electronics into a garment. We’re going to be working on either a hat if you’re a knitter, or a scarf if you’re a weaver.

 

We will actually create an e-textile garment in class. Very exciting! We’ll be starting with LED’s and looking at other things.

 

So I’m very excited about that class.

 

The next one is a class that I wish I could have taken when I started weaving. It is Clothing from the Rigid Heddle Loom. If you have been into rigid heddle weaving and produced scarf after scarf after scarf and you are done weaving scarves and now want to learn how to make flattering garments that fit you, come take this class. 

 

We are going to start with our big piles of fabric that everybody has woven up and learn how to piece together narrow yardage to make wonderful garments.

 

I’ll be teaching this class with Selah Barling. She is a professional tailor and you may have seen her articles up on WeaveZine.

 

So if you’re going to Madrona in February, please think about these classes. I think they’re going to be a very fun time.

 

I’m having a fun little give-away on the website. I was reading the Yarn Harlot blog a couple of weeks ago and she talked about light up LED pens. This is a pen that can sit by your bedside table and if you have an idea in the middle of the night you turn on the pen and it’s self-lit. Kind of like those knitting needles that self light. So you can write your idea down in the dark without having to get out of bed. I mean, how cool is that!

 

Immediately after learning that this thing existed I went and Google’d ‘light up LED pens’ and I found a website that had a minimum order of 20. Instead of ‘one’ light up LED pen, I soon had 20. I have been giving these pens away left, right and centre.

 

And I still have quite a few left. So, I’m going to share them with you!

 

Here’s how it’s going to work. I’m going to have a drawing and I’m going to give away five pens to five lucky WeaveCast listeners or WeaveZine readers. All you have to do to enter is go up to my blog, Syne’s Blog, it’s up on the WeaveZine site, and leave a comment on the blog post called My New Favourite Yarn – Polyester?

 

It is the complementary blog post to the audio essay that will follow the interview.

 

Musical interlude

 

 

SM I’m here in Tacoma (WA) with Holly Brackman who has just taught a wonderful five day workshop on Disperse Dyeing and Devore’.

 

It’s been just a fabulous time and I’m so delighted that you could be here with us.

 

HB Thank you, Syne.

 

SM How did you get involved with the fibre arts?

 

HB Well, I guess my original experience was weaving potholders as a child as many people were introduced to weaving. But, I didn’t ever think about myself as a weaver until, by chance, I took a weaving class in summer school while I was working on my Bachelor’s Degree.

 

So I took that first class and I was totally smitten with weaving. I continued to weave through graduate school although my master’s degree was in art history, I took graduate weaving classes as well.

 

Once I started teaching I continued to learn more and more about weaving and continued to weave. And dye.

 

SM You’ve been teaching in an academic setting for many years.

 

HB That’s right. I retired a little over a year ago from 37 years of teaching at the community college level, art history, weaving and dyeing.

 

SM These days, is weaving your primary focus?

 

HB I would say it’s very mixed. I have several looms at home and I weave at home but I also do surface design.

 

I would say I’m doing a bit more surface design right now than I am doing weaving.

 

SM One of the interesting things I got out of this workshop that I was just fortunate enough to take with you is, surface design can work together with weaving to make very interesting and creative textiles.

 

Could you talk a little bit about that?

 

HB Yes. Ten years ago I had a sabbatical from teaching and I decided that one of the goals I would set for myself during that sabbatical was to try to combine more surface design and weaving.

 

It was at that time that I started looking more at embellishment and things that could be done to weaving, as well as looking at structures and how they would relate to more surface techniques.

 

So I started looking more and more at dye techniques and delving into those.

 

SM Before we go any farther, we should probably describe some of these terms. Would you explain what devore’ is?  Did I say that right?

 

HB In Australia and Britain it is de-vore-ay. And in the United States it’s usually dev-or-ay.

 

SM Which do you consider more correct?

 

HB Well, I’m an American, I say dev-or-ay.

 

SM Okay. Well, would you explain how devore’ works?

 

HB Devore’ is a burn out, in simplest terms. It’s usually is a burn out of a cellulose, so you are dealing with a weaving that is a composite structure. In other words you have a cellulose and non-cellulose portion of the weaving and when the burn out solution is put on the fibre, the cellulose portion is eaten away.

 

Probably something that most people are familiar with are the rayon silk devore’ scarves or garments. There we have the silk, which does not burn out with the solution, but the rayon portion does burn out.

 

So you end up with areas that are more transparent and areas that are more opaque.

 

SM And one of the interesting things about being a weaver working with devore’ is that you can build fabric that makes the best use of this technique. 

 

HB That’s right.

 

There are not that many commercial fabrics that can be successfully eaten out by the burn out solution so weavers have this incredible possibility. They can use yarns that they either spin themselves and combine two different fibres. Or you can buy yarns that have a cellulose and non-cellulose portion.

 

And the non-cellulose portion could be polyester, it could be metal, it could be silk, so there is a wide range of possibilities.

 

SM There’s a devore’ where your yarn has two different fibres in it and you burn away part of the yarn, but then there’s also a devore’ where you have two different yarns and you burn away one entire yarn.

 

HB That’s right. That’s right. So you can have a variety of weave structures. Anything from plain weave to a very complex 20 shaft or more structure.

 

SM One of the things we looked at in the workshop was structural burn out. Can you describe how that works?

 

HB A structural burn out is one in which you eliminate some of the warp and weft yarns. So for instance, you could weave a 2:2 twill and you alternate warp and weft with cotton polyester alternating in warp and weft, treadle it for a 2:2 twill, and it will burn out to a plain weave.

 

 

Or by altering the weft order, you could also burn it out to a basket weave.

 

SM So it’s kind of like this intellectual puzzle where you have your original weave structure and when you’re planning it you pretend to remove threads and see what other weave structures you could potentially make.

 

HB That’s right.

 

SM And then design the type of fibres you use.

 

HB That’s right.

 

We looked, also in class, at an 8 shaft crepe weave, and that could be burned out to a 2:2 twill, basket weave and other structures.

 

SM Who came up with this interesting technique?

 

HB The person who introduced it to me was Joy Boutrup who was a textile engineer from Denmark. When she was commuting on the train she would play with weave structures on her laptop computer.

 

SM In your own art, what techniques have you focused on? Can you describe some of your pieces?

 

HB I like to do more art pieces, although I certainly have done garments and wearables and other things. But I like to use devore’ to burn out part of the fibre. I like it that it leaves a translucent area. And I also like the fact that when I have two or more fibres in a piece, I can use the appropriate dye to dye only one part of the fabric one colour, because for instance a polyester would not take a fibre reactive like Procion MX dye. Polyester and MX have no affinity to each other whereas the cotton portion would take the MX dye and then the polyester would not.

 

Then I would use disperse dye on the polyester portion of the fabric.

 

Typically when I do my pieces, if they’re flat I mount them on fibre glass window screening because then I can shine light through the screening as well as through the wall hanging and cast shadows on the wall. Or, if I’m doing a sculptural piece, because polyester has what are called thermoplastic properties, I can permanently pleat the polyester and then create 3 dimensional art pieces.

 

SM What are you trying to say with your art pieces?

 

HB I like to show people that a textile can be an art object. There is this great divide between fine art and craft and that is such an old argument. But when we look at the fact that a painter is usually applying paint to a canvas, they are dealing with fabric. But they never look at it that way.

 

I think more and more the lines are becoming blurred between what is fine art and what is craft, and many people that used to be considered painters are now actually doing things that are more craft in nature. By building up layers and collaging and assemblaging.

 

SM Assemblaging. I’ve never heard that before. What is assemblaging?

 

HB Well, assemblage would be bringing together diverse elements. Collage came from papier colle’ which was papers. But now assemblage goes beyond that. And most people today also, when they say collage, they’re not just talking about paper. A lot of collage artists are using all kinds of things.

 

I mean, fabric, they might be using beading, embellishments. Assemblage is bringing together very different elements.

 

SM Could you describe one of your art pieces?

 

HB I think I’ll choose one called The Path of Travel. It uses my footprints and travel is something I’ve very passionate about. I have travelled to many places in the world so I decided to do this piece and I wanted to use my own footprints.

 

I decided that I needed to ink the bottom of my feet. What I did then, is I printed two pieces of paper with my black footprint and then I made a screen.

 

This particular weaving is a structural burnout. It is an 8 shaft crepe/ 2:2 twill weave. I used the screen to burn out and also dye my footprints, and then I also transfer printed my footprints with disperse dyes onto the fabric, also.

 

SM That’s very cool that you actually used your own footprint as part of the art piece.

 

HB I have used my same footprints but I’ve reduced them on the copy machine so I’ve made other screens from my footprints and actually last year I did a piece that was some handwoven plain weave and I burnt out my little footprints on that one and then I stitched around it so it’s as though I’m in the sand and water and there are ripples around my feet.

 

SM Devore’ is such an interesting process in that you spend all this time making cloth and then you willfully destroy part of it. Is that part of what feeds your creative process?

 

HB Oh, I never think about it as really devouring, which is what the French word means, but I think of it more as adding to the piece because I’m visually changing it.

 

To me it’s not a destruction, it’s more an adding another facet to the piece.

 

SM That brings up another thing I’m very interested in. In your workshop and in your work, you use many different techniques and many different designs in the same piece. How do you know when to stop?

 

HB Usually I do think through a piece as much as possible because I have to know, well, if I’m weaving it, what the weave structure is, and the different types of dyes I’m going to use. Sometimes, where I think I’m going to stop, I don’t stop. Because I look at that piece and realize that more has to be done to it.

 

As with most artists, we’re always evaluating and re-evaluating what we’re doing. Part of life, though, is learning when to stop.

 

SM Have you ever pushed a piece too far?

 

HB Oh sure. There are always destructed pieces in the bottom of a closet or they were at some yard sale or something.

 

Oh sure! (laughter)

 

SM It’s very interesting the process you’ve described. It sounds like you have a vision of where you want the piece to go, and then you reverse engineer the steps that you need to layer to make that happen. Is that?

 

HB Yes. Yes. That’s true. I try to do that.

 

But then there are often things that happen that are unexpected and then one has to re-think the process and where the piece is going.

 

And also sometimes I have a vision of what I think the piece should look like and along the way it is nothing at all the way I think it should look or the way I envisioned it. So then maybe I’ll stop working on a piece for a while. Or I’ll hang it up where I can lay in bed and look at it in the morning when I get up and re-evaluate the piece.

 

I have some pieces that have been laying around for years. Then I’ll pick them up and I look at them with new eyes and continue on with that piece.

 

SM Where have your pieces been shown?

 

HB I’ve had one person shows, I have exhibited at various galleries through my career, I’ve exhibited at Convergences, and different conferences. But most of my living has been made from teaching. 

 

I have not felt pressured to necessarily sell my art work and make a living doing that.

 

SM In class you read to us from a book Art and Fear?

 

HB Yes.

 

SM It was such a cool thing to be working and having you read to us. Where did the idea for that come from?

 

HB I read that book when I was teaching at Penland. It was just something I took along with me to read during my two weeks there. It was so inspiring to me that I felt I needed to share it when I teach, with other students.

 

And since then I’ve learned some of my friends that have been in graduate school have now had it as required reading.

 

So I think it is a very good book because it talks about how artists have many fears, that they’re not going to make things properly and you know, we have to look within ourselves. Often we are our worst critics.

 

And I know that I am very, very critical of myself. For me, I guess it’s also a personal book to read and be inspired by.

 

SM Do you think that artists live along this catastrophe curve and that they have to be constantly judging their work? Like you talked about to decide if it needs more, but then you can go too far in the judging?

 

HB Oh sure. Well, that’s the type of person I am. I am very critical and always looking with a critical eye.

 

I think there are some people that are much more slapdash and hope it comes out. Maybe they discard way, way more. I think weavers tend to discard less than maybe a painter would because it takes us longer to make the fabric.

 

SM Yes, you can’t just gesso over a bad warp.

 

HB That’s right.

 

(laughter)

 

SM Bahkti Ziek gave me one of my favourite quotes from the book Art and Fear.  They were doing a study of artists and with one group they told them they would be graded on the quality of work. And in the other group they told them they would be graded on the quantity. And they found that all of the good art that was produced during that class was in the quantity section. I thought that was very interesting.

 

HB That’s very interesting.

 

SM It’s really been influencing how I think about my own work, even audio editing. You know, just do more and the good stuff will come.

 

HB Well, I think that that is very important for an artist, to just keep cranking out things. And I know for me personally, it’s much better to just keep making things and making things. Often we’re told it’s not the first thing that you make that is the best, it’s the 1000th thing you make, or the 100th or whatever.

 

But yes, you have to just keep generating things. And it’s more than technique. It’s using your eye, and creating.

 

SM Right. Because when you’re in your generative phase you not only can learn from happy accidents, but you learn from your materials, and it can focus you in a way that sitting down and thinking about it theoretically can’t. Right?

 

HB Well, last summer I did 80 pieces of fabric in 3 days. Now this was surface design. But I know have those 80 pieces of fabric and I’ve started to take out other pieces of commercial and also some fabric that I’ve generated through a computer, and I’m looking at how I can bring these various elements together.

 

You know, I’ve got this pile of 80 piece of fabric and so it’s very interesting. I thought okay, here, I’ve got all this fabric, you know, I can cut it up and just use however I want to.

 

SM So did you have a theme when you sat down to create 80 piece of fabric?

 

HB They are all marbled with disperse dyes.

 

SM We should talk about disperse dyes. Could you describe what those are?

 

HB Disperse dyes are dyes that work on what are called hydrophobic or water repelling fibres. So this would be basically synthetics.

 

Polyester, acrylic, nylon – this is a fibre category that does not take fibre reactive dyes, acid dyes – well, nylon will take some acid dyes. But anyway, most of these will not take those dyes.

 

So, disperse dyes are used industrially when they are used as an immersion or a solid colour dye, then there are some very harsh chemicals that are used. So as a studio artist, they are usually used in a process called dye sublimation or dye transfer printing.

 

And then in this process you paint the dye and the dye is simply dye mixed with water and a little bit of detergent. You paint it on paper and then you bring your fabric and the paper together. You iron it and the dye goes as a gas from the paper into the fibre.

 

These dyes are very, very long lasting. They have a long shelf life and they are very wash fast, light fast, and very bright colours.

 

SM I thought it was fascinating that finally there was a way to dye these materials that wouldn’t dye with any of the other things, plus it was such an easy process the way you taught it in the workshop.

 

HB I call this process dyeing without a dyepot because you need such a little amount of water. I think it appeals to people, especially in a drought situation, or if you don’t want to have a facility that has water. You just have these dyes mixed up and you might want to water them down a little bit but they are so easy to use. They are so quick and one piece of painted paper can be used many times.

 

It’s not as though you paint it once and that’s the end.

 

SM Right. And some of the results were just stunningly photorealistic.

 

HB If you stitch into the paper you can see the ply of the yarn or you can see all the individual fibres in a feather. It’s almost as though you’re looking at an x-ray.

 

Or leaves.

 

SM One lady had left a pin in her thing and she had a perfect photographic image of – it looked like there was still a pin in the fabric.

 

HB Yes.

 

SM How long have you been teaching workshops at guilds?

 

HB Over 30 years. I taught at conferences more than going and teaching at guilds. Basically because I had a full time teaching job. So I would take a few days off to maybe go teach at a conference or teach in the summer.

 

I did teach in the summer.

 

But over 30 years I’ve been teaching outside of the classroom.

 

SM So now that you’re retired are you a little bit more available for?

 

HB Yes! That’s why I’m here in Tacoma in fact. I had been invited previously by the Seattle Weavers’ Guild and I told them “I’m sorry I can’t come because I have a commitment, a job”.

 

SM Well, how exciting for us that you’ve retired.

 

HB Yes. Yes. Well, last year I went to Australia. I had a wonderful experience there teaching at two different conferences and at a university, also. That was wonderful.

 

SM So, you are a busy lady. In addition to teaching, and doing workshops and doing your own art, you also wrote this wonderful book that’s got just tons of illustrations and techniques called The Surface Designer’s Handbook. The sub-title is Dyeing, Printing, Painting and Creating Resist on Fabric.

 

You published it with Interweave Press in 2006?

 

HB 2006. That’s right.

 

SM So how did this book come about?

 

HB This book came about when I was at a Surface Design conference and Madelyn van der Hoogt had been sent by Interweave Press to find some people to write some other textile books.

 

She talked Katharine Ellis into writing her Woven Shibori book, and then she asked me if I would be interested in writing a book.

 

Originally I had planned that this book would only be for weavers. It would be about dye techniques for weavers. But the book evolved and became a technique book on many, many different topics. So in this book I tried to cover the basic types of dyes – fibre reactive, acid, vat and disperse – and then many, many techniques that can be done with those dyes and embellishments and a lot of techniques.

 

So, the book is being used as a text book in some universities but I also wanted a book that any person that was interested in a technique could use that recipe.

 

And then by looking at the photographs, they would get ideas. Because it’s not a book on how to do a certain type of weaving, or a certain type of wall hanging, but there are a lot of photographs for stimulation.

 

SM So it’s not a project driven book, it’s a toolbox.

 

HB Right. And I see this book as really the culmination of the things I learned about dyeing techniques over 30 plus years of teaching and going to workshops and interacting with people and with my students.

 

Some of the work in the book are pieces by former students. A lot of work is by professionals. It’s a real coming together of many, many people and many techniques.

 

SM One of the interesting things I’ve gotten out of this workshop is a real appreciation for surface design. I guess as a weaver I’d always had this kind of snobbish view that, well, surface design is just, you know, putting pretty ink on the surface. And I didn’t really think about how using techniques like devore’ and combining different fibres you can really build from the inside out and make it an integral part of the process.

 

HB Right.

 

SM It’s given me a whole new appreciation for surface design.

 

HB I see weaving and surface design as a melding together of techniques. By knowing both ends of the spectrum you can create very unique pieces.

 

Because as weavers, we can create our own fabric. And if you know surface design techniques, then you can bring them together and create wonderful new expressions.

 

SM It’s also a great way to break out of the grid. 

 

You don’t have a Jacquard loom and you want to do spirals. Yes, you can print them.

 

(laughter)

 

You say the book evolved as you wrote it. Can you still see the weaving unpinning in the book? I mean, do you talk about weaving in the book?

 

HB I don’t talk about weave structures but there are definitely a lot of photographs that have handwoven pieces and for instance, the piece I described earlier, it says that it’s a crepe weave burned out to a twill.

In the illustrations.

 

SM Now if somebody wanted to see your work, do you have a website?  Or a Gallery?

 

HB I have a website. http://hollybrackman.com

 

Right now I’m in a gallery in San Diego – Visions Gallery. I have some work there. They are devore’ scarves that are permanently pleated.

 

SM You were also wearing a scarf that had like little bubbles.

 

HB Yes, that’s one of the scarves that I’m selling currently at Visions Gallery. That was a commercial fabric that was devore’d and also using disperse dyes and then rayon, and so I created the scarves and dyed the rayon and then permanently pleated the bubble. I call it my bubble scarf, by tying marbles into the fabric. 

 

And then I put it into a pressure cooker to make sure that the pleats and the folds were permanently pleated.

 

SM One of the cool things that I see in your work, coming out of your knowledge of the dyes, is that you often layer image upon image, in such a way that there is one block of colour that’s intersected with another block of colour and the spot where they intersect create a third colour.

 

So it’s very translucent.

 

HB That’s one of the things I like about devore’ and using a sheer fabric or an opaque fabric, bringing them together. Yes, it’s creating that transparency and also letting the eye mix the colours, rather than just putting on one solid colour. If I wanted a green I could have a yellow and a blue layer together and optically create that green.

 

SM I’ve made a major discovery this week. Polyester. Once a hated fibre is now one of favourite fibres!

 

When did you start using polyester in your work. I mean there’s such a focus on using natural fibres in the weaving community.

 

HB I think I started using polyester when I learned about disperse dyes.

 

The fact that those dyes have a relationship with polyester. And then I learned more and more about the quality of polyester and the fact that it could be permanently pleated because a lot of my weavings over many years have been all about 3 dimensional pieces.

 

I used to weave pieces I called 3 dimensional forms from flat woven pieces. And so I’ve been intrigued by the architectural and 3 dimensional quality of textiles.

 

And once I figured out that I could permanently pleat polyester, and it could be washed and those pleats would stay, I became enamoured with polyester. 

 

I agree with you. Many people are so turned off by even the word polyester because they think of these horrible polyester double knit suits or something like that. But if polyester is used correctly, it has a such a beauty and you can use these disperse dyes that are so easy to use.

 

So there is a wonderful magical quality to polyester that a lot of people don’t know about.

 

SM And you’ve got me looking at my stash and you know, my cotton/poly t-shirts in a whole new way!

 

Disperse dyes sound so easy to use. You just lay them on, heat set them, no water is even involved. Is there anything about them that’s challenging?

 

HB Yes. The most challenging factor is that the dye, when you are using the dye sublimation or dye transfer process. The colour of the dye when you put it on the paper is not at all the colour that it will end up when it is transferred.

 

For instance, you can have this very muddy looking yellow brown colour and when you transfer it, it can be a screaming yellow.

 

What you see is not what you get.

 

You learn though. Like in any other endeavour, you learn by doing and you have to do some sampling. Sample, sample, sample, right? Okay!

 

So yes, what you see is not what you get.

 

SM We talked about disperse dyes and the fact that they are a transfer dye. Could you describe briefly how the process works?

 

HB The concentrated dye solution is made up by mixing dye, water and a little bit of synthropol. So you have containers of very concentrated dye and then you can paint the dye on paper, and you let it dry on the paper and then you put the paper, the painted paper, against the piece of fabric and you iron it. Dry iron.

 

Then this dye sublimation process occurs as it moves from the paper into the fabric as a gas.

 

The dye can also be thickened. If you want to have areas that you have done a monoprint, you can thicken the dye with a substance called monogum. Then apply that to the paper and take an object and stroke through the dye or you can do monoprints. Various techniques.

 

But it can be thin or thick.

 

SM What is next for you, busy woman?

 

HB In a couple of weeks I’m going to a textile conference in Peru. I’m looking forward to seeing indigenous weavers in Peru. And then I will be, after the first of the year, teaching some other workshops around the United States.

 

SM Very exciting. Thank you so much for coming and talking to us on the show.

 

HB   Thank you Syne.

 

 

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Today’s audio essay: My New Favourite Yarn!

 

My new favourite yarn – Polyester?

 

I confess. I have been having a strange flirtation with polyester. It started when I learned that polyester can be heat set. So if you, for example, weave woven shibori and then draw the strings to pleat the fabric, and then put it in hot water or steam it, the polyester will retain the memory of its new shape. It actually kind of melts a little bit.

 

Then after you take the strings off, it is permanently pleated. And you can even wash it and it will stay permanently pleated. 

 

I have been playing around with that property of polyester and I have actually gone out of my way to seek out 100% polyester 5/2 yarn. 

 

It is weird! Weird, weird! Because I am very much a natural fibre snob. At least up until this past week I was. 

 

So I have been playing around with heat setting and then I fell into this workshop with Holly Brackman. I’ve been interested in devore’ for a while. I read Anne Field’s wonderful book titled Devore’, which talks about how to do burn out using woven structures and all the interesting things you can do.

 

But I hadn’t ever actually tried it.

 

In this class we used a yarn that was a cotton coated polyester. You can buy sewing thread or serger thread that is like this, but this is thicker. It’s about the size of a 10/2 cotton.

 

It was called Coates T-105.

 

A little bit hard to find. If you find a good source for this on the internet, please let me know. I’m looking for more.

 

But using this, we were able to weave fabric and then we used the devore’ to burn away the cotton part and just let this translucent polyester behind.

 

Now that was cool! Really cool.

 

But! There was more!

 

The disperse dye part of the workshop had happened before the devore’ part, and I didn’t get to go to that but the gear was still there and the people who had been to that workshop were still using that technique, so I kind of picked things up around the edges.

 

And one of the coolest things to do was, you take a piece of paper and you paint it with the disperse dye, then you put Japanese maple leaves on it, put that on a piece of polyester fabric and put it in the heat press. Then you’ll have a negative image of the Japanese leaves. But there will be disperse dye on the Japanese leaves. You can then take the Japanese leaves and lay them on a new piece of polyester, heat set it and you will see a photo-realistic transfer.

 

I mean it was just stunning. And if you had painted the disperse dye, instead of in a solid colour, but with swirly colours, the print of the leaf looks like the colours of fall with all the different shadings of gold and red. And you got the little veins and everything. It was just stunning!

 

And so, polyester is starting to tempt me greatly!

 

I’m finding myself rustling through my stash of sewing thread, seeing what’s cotton covered polyester.

 

Basically when anybody in my family gets out of crafting I get a big bag of stuff. So I have a lot of both 100% polyester thread, and this cotton covered polyester thread that I’m looking at in an entirely, entirely new light.

 

And I know that there are issues with the way polyester and other synthetics are created. I know that they use petroleum. And that that’s bad. But uh – you can do some really cool things with polyester.

 

So there’s this dichotomy. I’ve discovered some really cool new techniques. They use some kind of not friendly chemicals, and I’m trying to think about, you know, how to treat the chemical waste from this because I don’t want to pollute the environment. I don’t want to just throw these things down my septic tank.

 

And of course I’m wearing proper protective gear. When you do the burn out, you produce some acid gas that you don’t want to be inhaling. So there are some technical challenges. There are some ethical concerns. But there is just the pure magic of using disperse dyes. And I’m doing burn out.

 

The way that you can layer design upon design upon design. You can overlap procion MX dyes with polyester dyes, with devore’ and create these really rich and gorgeous fabrics.

 

One of the projects we did in the workshop was a woven shibori that used both disperse dyes and burn out in the shibori to create just – ach – you have to look at the pictures! Which is why the second half of this audio essay is actually a blog post.

 

If you go up to the WeaveZine site, and look for the blog post My New Favourite Yarn – Polyester? – you will find pictures that I took during the workshop and a bit more description of what happened in the workshop and some images of my samples.

 

It was an amazing time.

 

If you ever get an opportunity to take a class with Holly Brackman – don’t worry if it’s a surface design class – the woman is a weaver and there is weaving content inside and as we talked about in the interview, surface design isn’t just happening at the surface level. You can construct the fabric specifically for certain surface design techniques so they really work hand in hand.

 

You construct the fabric from the ground up in order to play nicely with the techniques you want to use later.

 

And it’s just added this extra layer of design potential and complexity and since I had that class, my mind is just roiling with all kinds of projects I want to work on.

 

I’ve got some very cool ideas.

 

(sigh) I wish there were about three of me.

 

So that’s what I’ve been up to. It’s given me a whole new appreciation for synthetic fibres. Holly Brackman is a wonderful teacher. Very inspiring. It was a great time. I ended up sitting at a table at the back with Mary and Deena and Tammy and we decided that we were the bad girls table. We were kind of self-elected bad girls. Because we were in the back wise-cracking and chewing gum and having a grand old time.

 

I will admit I’m a bit of a workshop junkie. I love learning new things. I have a really hard time not signing up for workshops. Even if it is something that I’m not specifically interested in, you almost always come away with some nugget of information that just changes how you do your art.

 

And sometimes it’s specifically the classes that you weren’t that excited about taking because they are filled with the things that you don’t already know. I kind of tentatively encourage you to explore the possibilities of polyester. I say ‘tentatively’ because I’m still struggling to overcome my natural fibre snobbery. But I gotta say, some of the things you can do with polyester, nylon and acrylic, are pretty darn cool.

 

That’s all for this episode. And now it’s time to get warped because everyone knows, you have to be warped to weave.

 

I’m going to play you out with an appropriate song. This is Nylon Heat by John Gilliat.

 

Musical interlude

 

 

Our musical guest this episode was John Gilliat with his song Nylon Heat. It was provided through the PodSafe Music Network.

 

Our sponsor this episode was Bonnie Tarsus, celebrating 50 years of weaving. Congratulations Bonnie!

 

WeaveCast is brought to you through the generosity of our sponsors and donating listeners, just like you. If you have the means and would like to support WeaveCast through a financial contribution, you can do so on the WeaveZine site. Simply go to Podcast and select Donate.

 

Thank you for your support.

 

Musical interlude