Linen Fiber Part I

My newest Arts and Science project is a study of Medieval Fibers. My documentation will be a history of where and when the fiber was used and also how it was processed. I will have fibers, spun samples and woven samples to accompany all of the fibers I cover in the documentations. I will post about these fibers as I work on them. The original motivation for this project was to make a display of period fibers and I figured I might as well also make it an Arts and Science project. It has been a great learning experience and I have found out some really cool information. But of course the most fun is to work with the fibers.

 

So here is Flax which when it is woven will magically become Linen.

 

I would like to process my own small quantity of flax from scratch someday, but that will be another Arts and Science project entirely. For now I am using some commercially processed flax I purchased from Halcyon Yarn.

 Singles

 

I purchased a pound of it and since it is a large quantity I have decided to spin it on my Ladybug wheel. I am wet spinning it, which means I am dipping my fingers in water to smooth out the fiber after I have drafted it. I am so surprised at how thin I am able to spin it. Spinning flax is quite a different experience from spinning wool. It feels like straw and you would think that it would be difficult to join the fibers to the spun single but it is actually pretty easy. I have been really enjoying working with it.

 

Singles ready for plying

 

Plied yarn with a quarter for reference

 

 

plied yarn is 17 WPI. It needs to be scoured then dyed.

 

 

I am going to set aside some of the unspun flax, along with 25 yards of spun linen and a small woven sample to go with the Arts and Science project. I plan to dye the rest of it up using synthetic dye (natural dye do not work as well on linen) and then weave up a small plaid table cloth.

 

I still have some more to spin then on to the dying and weaving. Stay tuned!

 

Hand Spun Embroidery Floss Part I

Last year at the Maryland sheep and wool festival I picked up a pound of some beautiful Shetland combed top wool. I have processed some raw fleece but I wanted a really nice wool that I could use to make embroidery floss with. I thought Shetland would be especially good for this as the fiber has a long staple length and with a good wool you can spin it really fine.

I have decided that I would indeed make hoods from the Black Welsh Mountain sheep hand woven fabric I had left over from my Fleece to Flock project that had to be re worked. I will go ahead and finish the fabric as I had intended to for the dress. I am going to make an open front hood for myself and hood for my husband that is decorated with embroidery. The embroidery will be done from my own handspun.

I want to try doing a gradient dying on the skeins. I have a kit with all natural dyes. The plan is to mordant all the skeins at once and then make a strong dye bath of a color. Dye the first skein in it. Then dye a second, and then a third. If I work it right each of the three skeins should be lighter shade of the same color.

 

 

The original combed top. It came from The Little Barn vendor at the Maryland Sheep and Wool festival

 

the same wool out of the bag.

 

Lots of skeins!! I mad small 10 yard skeins to use as samples for the Arts and Science display and the larger 25 yard skeins will be what I actually use to embroidery with. I am sure it will last me a long time and be used for many projects.

 

 

I took a really great spinning class taught by Nelda Davis and in the class she told us a great way to scour our yarn after spinning. You fill a pot with warm water, add enough Orvus paste so that the water feels slippery. Add the yarn and heat the water to almost boiling for about 20-40 minutes, gently moving yarn around 2-3 times. turn off the heat then let cool in the pot. Spin the yarn dry and let it hang dry. The yarn comes out really great looking and completely clean. I thought it wise to do this if I intended to dye it to make absolutely sure there was no dirt or grease left in the yarn.

 

I have a pot dedicated to dying. NEVER, ever dye in pots you prepare food in. Since I have a reserved pot for dying I also use it for scouring yarn. It is a very heavy stainless steel pot.

 

doesn't that look yummy? At least I know it is clean.

 

Check back to find out how they dying comes out!

 

My silk painting experiment

I have wanted to make silk banners with my hubby's heraldry on it for many years. I have seen so many beautifully painted silk banners and the people who made them always assured me it was easy. The problem was I didn't know what the right paints for the job. I am a big fan of Dharma Trading (I have been getting tie dye supplies from them for years) but there were so many choices I didn't know where to begin.

The original plan was to make 2 long thin silk banners with my husbands heraldry on them. The first one is going to go on a finial on the top of our round pavilion and the second will go on a banner pole that my son can carry when we walk with my hubby to battle. Our camp at Pennsic would also love to have silk banners lining the walls of our common tent with all or our personal heraldry along with the baronies and kingdoms we belong to.

I decided instead of continue my fruitless search for someone to walk me through it, that I would use my chemistry training and run an experiment of my own, and it was so much fun!!!!

I ordered two starter kits from Dharma, the first was the Jacquard silk colors (green label) starter kit which had a gutta resist  and the other was the silk painting starter kit and that one had a water based resist.  The first kit had silk dyes that needed to go through a chemical rinse and the gutta would not wash out. The second kit has silk paints that needed to be heat set with an iron and the water based gutta will wash out in warm water after setting. I also purchased a set of silk hankies so I could mix and match the kit contents and see what I liked the best. Here are my results.

      Kit #1

 This kit contained the Jacquard silk dyes and the gutta resist. The dye has the advantage over paint because when it dries it feels like part of the fabric, it is actually dying the fabric as opposed to paint that just lays on top. This test did not work out as well as I had hoped because I think I had a bad batch of gutta. It was so thick and dried out it was extremely difficult to get it through the metal point on the applicator bottle. As a result some of my gutta lines were bad and I had a lot of bleed through. When they get in a new batch of gutta over at Dharma Trading, I would like to try again. It did seem I could get a thinner line with this gutta, with the water based gutta it spread out a lot more when it got on the fabric. I think also when doing the silk banners for the common tent it might be nice to use a black colored gutta and it would look a bit like stained glass when done.

 I love to collect medieval style coloring books. The bold lines in the designs are great for tracing through fabric for an embroidery design or applique. And now I found another great use for them, silk hanky designs :) Since I was only using 12 x 12 silk hankies I used an inexpensive 12 x 12 wooden frame I bought at Michael's to stretch out the silk. Now that I feel I will be doing this a lot more in the future I will invest in a fabric stretcher frame . I pulled out my little light box to trace the design but the silk was so fine I didn't need it.

 Here is the silk hanky with the design traced on the silk in pencil. I used rubber bands and safety pins stretched over the push pins that came with the other kit to really stretch it out.
I put some of the gutta into a small squeeze bottle with a metal tip and went over all the pencil lines and made sure that all the lines that passed over each other had a good solid connection. The gutta stops the dye from spreading to an area you don't want it to go into. As I mentioned before my gutta was hard to work with so I had a lot of bleeding. After the gutta is put on the silk I let is sit and dry for about an hour or so before going in with the dye.

I applied the dye with the sumi brush that came with the kit. I really liked how the brush came to a point but I washed it in warm water to try and get the dye out before the next color and the brush totally puffed up. Maybe I shouldn't have washed it, but I would be surprised if these were supposed to be one use brushes. After the dying was all done I let it dry for 24 hours. Then I rinsed it in the fixative bath according to the directions on the bottle.

The finished result!!  The color remained nice and bright I was really happy with the results despite the color bleeding. It actually kind of has a water color effect. When you feel the silk you can feel the gutta there but not the dye.

 Kit #2

 

 

 This kit contained Dye-na-flow silk paint and water based gutta that can be washed out after you heat set the paint.

I traced the pattern in pencil and attached it to the frame the same way as with the kit #1 sample

 

The water based gutta was much easier to work with. It glided out of the applicator bottle easily but it did spread out a little more when it hit the silk. For my husband's heraldic banner that shouldn't be too much of a problem since it is green on white. I will just shift the gutta over a little bit onto the white part of the design. After I applied the gutta I let it dry for about an hour before adding the paint. 



 

The paint went on easily as well. The colors were nice and bright.

After the painting was done I let the design dry again for 24 hours. Then I went over it according to the directions with a hot iron with a scrap cloth under and over the design. After it was heat set I washed the silk in warm soapy water and the resist easily came off and the paint stayed intact.

 



The final result. It was very easy to work with both the water based resist and the dye-na-flow paints. There is definitely a difference in the final appearance. This definitely has a "paint" appearance to it, and it does slightly stiffen the silk where the paint is. For the heraldic banners hanging on the walls it would be fine, but for the heraldic banners we want to flow in the breeze we will definitely go with the dyes. that leads me to my next experiment........

Silk Dye with Water based resist 

 



 In the Dharma Trading catalog it says that the water based resist doesn't do to well going through the chemical fixative used with the silk dyes. But I was in the mood to experiment and since I didn't have a good result with the gutta resist in the first kit (I didn't know for sure it was a bad batch until I wrote this post and saw it on their website) so I forged ahead in the name of science!!!

I traced the design using pencil, stretched the hanky on my frame, added the water based gutta and let it dry for about an hour. Then I added the Jacquard silk dyes using the sumi brush and a regular paint brush. I let that all dry for 24 hours and then put it in the chemical fixative rinse. The water based gutta had no problem washing out at all!

 The final result. I was very happy with the result I got from using the jacquard silk dye and the water based gutta. I think this is the combination I am going to go with for the heraldic banners for my hubby. I still have lots of everything left from the starter kit. I think I will have to host my own silk painting workshop for my medieval friends.