Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Make Lamp with branches - Collaboration

It is a lighting made by a sculptor, done patchwork used natural dyed Silk Dupioni Organza. The sculptor is interested in dead branches therefore this work was done using them. She, the sculptor, had seen my natural dyed silk by chance and then suggested me that made a work together. I gave him my patchwork which might harmonize with dead branches well so he made the lighting with wood. The Silk Dupioni Organza was very good to make the lightings because it is naturally irregular in texture so makes more gorgeous with light.


The sculptor tried to bring the dead branches to life covered natural silk on it. The colors from natural material matched well with the branches. The Silk Dupioni Organza what I used was also 100% natural silk. Thus, all of materials except a part of light were given from nature.


Patchwork pattern was expressed well reminding of another dead branches in order that the sculptor's intention .

The feature of the Silk Dupioni Organza
is showing variety of appearance
by the location and the intensity
of the light.
Of course, all kinds of see-through fabrics
have the same feature of it,
but the Silk Dupioni Organza can't be
compared with artificial silk organza.
Because it is silky naturally with glossy
effect. From it, the beautiful changing color
has created.
She insisted fabrics dyed 100% natural materials without chemical changes and that was an excellent choice to reborn the dead branches as the lighting.


I found out that how important is the finished product not only concerns for dyeing and pattern. Bringing to this work, I'm considering of collaborations with more craft artists, lighting & interior and curtain designers who have attention to my fabric.

Monday, September 23, 2013

Making Door Treatment with silk

Making Door Treatment with Natural Dyed Silk
Material : Silk Dupioni Organza, sappanwood

Last winter, I was been in Hawaii and came back left there a work made with my special silk. I actually planned a travel for three weeks, but when I got there, my mind was changed to stay there longer, for three months which means that I had more time for travelling relaxedly. Luckily, I got a room to my fancy at my first visit in Hawaii. The owner of the house which I rent was so friendly to me and offered many helps, so  I wanted to give a present to her. Fortunately, a few my special silk (Silk Dupioni Organza) were in my travelling bag and I could make a pretty door treatment and present her a gift.
The house where I stayed had a hall connected with kitchen and the window treatment was fitted on a door of the hall. I was impressed that my silk organza was matched nicely with Hawaiian sunshine. When the light is given evenly on inside and outside of Dupioni Organza, the original colors of work become lighter than usual by a glassy feature and the silk looks like stained glass. This picture below was taken inside the brightly lit hall on a very shinny day.


But when it was seen from outside in the darkness with the light inside on only, then it showed  more deeper colors perfectly. That is, if the silk get some light from behind, the colors can be most beautiful.


This Silk Dupioni Organza is affected from the light like other Organza fabric but it has glossy feature more than chemical fabric like polyester, so it has much quality. And what's more, it is glassy because of the Silk Duppioni feature, the slub pattern on the silk and the different tread thickness of the fabric. The biggest feature of this silk makes a variety of color at everytime.

I did patchwork with red silk dyed sappanwood and undyed Silk Dupioni Organza. It looked more glassy from different thickness of yarn in the middle of the fabric. This feature can not be seen from other silk organza, also can not be compared with polyester.

These days I'm dyeing gradations of colors on Silk Dupioni Organza. That's kind of hard work because I have to move the fabric incessantly for making gradation. I'm writing this page during the breaking time in the middle of the work.
MISSING HAWAII.


Sunday, September 22, 2013

Patchwork with naturally dyed silk - Gardenia, Sappan wood

I was hooked on natural dyeing last year. I prefer real natural material dyeing rather than dyeing with powder. Silk is dyed well when vegetability materials are used. If you want to do successful dye with materials such as onion skin, mugwort then you should dye silk. Because treads from silk cocoons like vegetable. The picture below is the work used Silk Organza that were dyed with gardenia and sappan wood. Here is more information about this patchwork.

The processes of dyeing with gardenia and sappan wood are quite simple but they make so gorgeous color. If you can get gardenia and sappan wood then why don't you try to do dyeing silk through the way below?


Dyeing using Gardenia

1. Keep gardenia soaked in water for half the day and then boil it. Simmer it another 30 mins after it has  boiled.(Boiling term can be modulated by the dyeing materials' condition. It means that if the coloring looks enough then boil it for just 10 mins more).

2. Prepare Alum. I don't like using chemical fixative, so usually use a bit mild burnt alum which is sold at Oriental medical clinic.(They sell burnt alum which is edible.) Dissolve the burnt alum(5% of the fabric weight) completely in 50degrees water and put the silk in it. Keep the silk like that with kneading sometimes for 20 mins.(the liquid not thrown away after that)
3. Prepare dyeing solution. Shift well the boiled gardenia. The solution temperature needs to be 60 degrees.(That's suitable for silk) Put finished step 2's silk into the solution and dye it about 30 mins. If you knead the fabric well at this time the coloring would be better.
4. Put the dyed fabric into step 2(Alum water) for fixing color and knead it for 15 mins.

5. Rinse the silk with water and dry it in shade. The picture below is the result of dyeing Silk Dupioni Organza with gardenia.


Dyeing using Sappan wood

Sappan wood is a plant growing in the tropical regions and the red-yellow wood part is used for reddish dyestuff. The terms of keeping steeped sappan wood in water depends on the state of the wood before dyeing. Generally soak it about 3~4 hours then extract dyeing solution but it should be in water the day before dyeing if the wood is in so dried state. Using the alkali water(ph8~9) for dyeing deep red color. I didn't use the alkali for changing the color, just used for extract deep red coloring.  The process of below is about intense red dyeing using sappan wood.
  
1. Soak the sappan wood in water for 3~4 hours before dyeing.

2. Prepare water which is alkali(ph8~9) and put the soaked sappan wood in water and boil it. 
I used 'Natural Lime Powder' instead 'Casutic Soda' for making alkali water. (At the moment in Korea, people are dyeing naturally as traditional ways with Natural Lime Powder and avoiding using chemical fixatives more and more..) The sappan wood is helpful to be extracted the solution when it's boiled in alkali water.
3. Shift well dyeing solution of  sappan wood and do the step 2 once again. That is, use the extracte sappan wood again and mix the solutions from fitst and second step. It will be dyeing solution.

4. Prepare water for color-fixing with alum. Dissolve alum(5% of the fabric weight)  completely in 50 degrees water and put the silk in it. Keep the silk like that with kneading  sometimes for 20 mins.
(keep the alum water for another step) This part makes the fabric coloring effectively. The sappan wood come out well for dyeing but the fastness of original color is not as good as gardenia so shouldn't skip this step.
5. Neutralize the prepared dyeing solution of step 3 using vinegar or citric acid.(ph7)  
I needed perfectly red color so I neutralized the alkali dyeing solution before dyeing.
For your information, if you dye with alkali state of water then you can get violet series but the fastness of color is worse than reddish color.
6. Put the fabric into the solution and dye it. 
The water was about 50 degrees and dyeing time took an hour. The high temperature needs short time to dye and the low one needs more. I did it with low temerature for reducing the risk from dyeing that silk might have. If the fabric has stains when you dye then the low temperature and long time can be one of the key.

7. The dyed fabric needs to be soaked in water(step.4) for color-fixing. About 15 mins with kneading needed.

8. Rinse and dry it in shade.

Tip!
For coloring an orange, do dye the fabric by gardenia first and then dye it by sappan wood again. In that case, that's okay with the gardenia dyeing through the way of above. But the sappan wood dyeing needs to be check the color during the dyeing and should be dyed 5 mins more after getting color you want, then the proper color comes out.


Monday, September 16, 2013

Silk patchwork

Patchwork with Silk Dupioni Organza vs. General silk
I make patchwork things with not only Silk Dupioni Organza but also regular silk. Both of them are 100% silks from cocoons but they have noticeable difference about hand feeling and gloss. Silk Dupioni tends to resist wrinkles, so enhance the usability of the finished fabric. Also because of this feature, it is ironed well and sew easier than regular silk. Silk Dupioni Organza is more crispy and stiff than Silk Dupioni, so it can give the final product a crisp and formal appearance. Therefore when it is made up of interior props, the works look neat, flawless.
On the other hand, the cloth silk has feeling of hand made work, soft and warm. The below photos are the wall clock done patchwork with regular silk (for cloth or scarf) and the color swatch book made of Silk Dupioni Organza.

The regular silk was soft and slippery unlike cotton or linen so it was difficult to do sewing. I used a thin silk(usually used for scarf) and did my endeavor not to make crumples on the fabric doing sewing and ironing repeatedly. But it still had a few.  From the brilliant coloring and the gloss, the silk made warm feeling.  Ah! All silks used for this clock were dyed naturally using natural dye. The light purple and blue colors came from Lithospermum root, the light pink from a Safflower, the yellow from Marigold and the pink was from Sappan wood. I like natural dyeing and I know how to do it but still doing it is so exhausted. Because the process would take a long time without chemical fixative which I don't want to use. I guess using chemical fixative is worse than chemical dyeing for the environment. Because doing natural dyeing needs pretty much amount of natyral dye and chemical fixatives. Especially chemical materials like copper sulphate give demage for the environment but it is still using for natural dyeing in many places. For now, the traditional ways of dyeing is getting more and more in Korea rather than using chemical fixative. I'm thinking that opening the blog about natural dyeing later as well.  I seem to be straying from main subject of this posting.. :)  Anyway, what I want to say in here is all  100% silk is dyed well with vegetables,  so  all silks used for this clock were dyed using natural dye.



This is the front of a book with Silk Dupioni Organza patchwork. It's also done by natural dye with marron, gardenia and indigo leaf. As I said already, I've learnt and studied natural dyeing. This book is a natural dyeing color swatch book contained cotton, silk, linen and also Korean hemp, Korean ramie fabric are included. These fabrics are dyed with same materials showing coloring level through a variety of fabrics. I chose a portfolio book suited the swatch book and decorated the front cover with the Silk Dupioni Organza, my favorite, so it looks more tidy than when it was done with general cloth silk.

If it is observed more detailedly the Silk Dupioni Organza is transparent, crispy and less gloss unlike the general silk is more like fabric and glossy.  The cloth silk is consisted of tight treads without a gap even though it's very thin fabric. But the Silk Dupioni Organza is made up of cross stripes so it's transparent by gaps of fabric. It makes different feeling from background's color, and that's why the Silk Dupioni Organza is suitable for lightings.

General silk
I mainly do fabric dyeing and also do the pattern dyeing, painting. I usually work with silk, and  nowadays  I design Silk Dupioni Organza by hand. The sewing is just my hobby for pleasure. If you do a patchwork -like quilt- profecionally, you may make things better than me. Are you a textile crafter? and Are you interested in this silk Organza? If you want to try making somethings then why don't you send me an e-mail? If it's not so big work, I'd be glad to send some this silk for your experience. :)  euntextile@gmail.com

Friday, September 13, 2013

How to use wax to dye fabric

For getting crinkle pattern among tie-dyeing,  we usually crumple fabric and fix by thread. The pattern size and shape are up to the nature of fabrics. The thin fabric can make fine pattern but it's really difficult to get the perfect cracking even though the crumpling is so elaborate. Then, using wax can be the solution to get more elaborate and detail cracking rather than using the thread.
I would like to show the precess of cracking using wax in this posting. I tested with Silk Dupioni Organza but the cotton can be idealistic for doing this process.

Cracking dyeing with red color on white fabric.

Made red cracking on the fabric dyed yellow color.

Process to dye with wax

The paraffin or wax could be used and I did use soywax. The soywax can be removed easily by water so I didn't need to use chemicals for removing wax. But soywax was not removed perfectly, too. The remaining was need to be absorbed to the oilpaper. Then, let me explain the precess shortly.

1. First of all, boil wax or wax to be melted and apply it to the whole fabric prepared for cracking using a brush.
2. For making red cracking on the yellow basis then dye the fabric with yellow color and then apply the soywax on the fabric. I have used the yellow fabric which is dyed with gardenia.
3. When the soywax is dried completely, crumple by hands like the photo below. Do crumple when we crumple paper. The left one is for red cracking on yellow basis like explained above, the right one is for red cracking on white basis.
4. Put the crumpled fabric into the dyeing solution. The cracking pattern is made when the dyeing solution percolate to the gaps which have made by hand crumpling to chip off the soywax.
5. Soywax needs to be removed in boiling water after dyeing. I've used silk so couldn't put it in extremely hot water that caused the soywax wasn't removed perfectly, but the cotton can remove the soywax by boiling water. Then I used oilpaper, put the fabric between oilpaper and did ironing so that the remaining soywax can be absorbed into the oilpaper.
I've done this precess for the test of elaborate cracking on Silk Dupioni Organza but when I do Batik work, normally I use cotton. I think cotton is more suitable fabric to this work that can remove the soywax ideally. But if you use a see-through fabric like silk organza  in a small work, you may get gorgeous hand dyed fabric which is useful for interior props like lightings.

Thursday, September 12, 2013

How to dye with onion skins

The onion skin is a useful material which is got lots of coloring easily. People who know I do natural dyeing around me give the materials from time to time. The onion is easy for getting color but only skin is used for dyeing so collecting of large amount of skin is quite uneasy. If you are interested in natural dyeing, spread about your interest to others. You may get much onion skin like me.

Let's start looking the onion skin dyeing. This is the basic way of natural dyeing using vegetable. I've used the Silk Dupioni Organza but the usual silk also can get the similar color, too. Though the cotton's color is lighter than silk's as I always say that the silk likes vegetables.

1. Boil water with dried onion skin. Keep boiling it for 20 mins more after it comes to a boil.  
I used 2L of water and 50g of onion skin.


2. Prepare the dyeing solution sift the filter net out.

3. Do the second decoction through step1 and 2 once again. It means that pour water to the onion skin what was extracted once and boil it for second decoction. This time the water needs the half amount of the beginning(1L). The onion skin can be third decoction caused by a plentiful color.

4. Combine the first, second and third dyeing solution together. Cool the added solution approximately down as 60 degrees and dye the fabric for 30 mins. 


5. Use Alum as a fixative. 
Soak the fabric in 60 degrees' water contained alum (5% of the fabric weight) for 30 mins. 
This step is for mordant dye.  

6. Rinse in water and dry it in shade.


The result of dyeing is satisfied though the onion skin was small quantity. The gardenia dyeing makes yellow color and the onion skin makes orange color like nearly gold.


I have tried shibori(a pole-wrapping technique)  pattern dye.

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

About Silk Dupioni Organza



I want to introduce the Silk Dupioni Organza. This silk is different from Silk Dupioni (=douppioni ) or Silk Organza.  This is translucent silk which is reeled off raw silk from Dupioni cocoons, one of the Korean traditional fabrics. When I've seen this silk for the first time, I was memorized by it. I couldn't think that it was silk because it looked very different with other silks that I used to know, but I had a memory seen it used for the fabric of  'Hanbok', the Korean traditional clothes.


I know that some countries produce rarely Dopioni Organza. But then Korean Dupioni Organza has characteristic features and beutifulness. May you have already known of Organza silk. It's a stiff and transparent fabric used for interior decorations or cloths. Then, have you heard about Dupioni(=douppioni) silk?  Silk Dupioni is made by reeling off raw silk from more than two silkwoms in a cocoon. When two worms spin their cocoons close together, the fibers get tangled up. These naturally tangled fibers are then used together to make thread. The thread contains bumps and irregularities where the fibers from the two cocoons are combined.
 
The Korean Silk Dupioni Organza has features both of organza and silk dupioni, and traditional fabric used for Hanbok, the Korean traditional clothes. Korean call this fabric 'Oksa' which is made in many areas in Korea. There is differences of a sort of Oksa from a matter of stiff, a matter of transparent or slubs density. The weaving way is also bit different but most of all are produced in traditional way. Some producers still use the traditional way 100% and that silks are considered high-quality goods. Others 'also' use a traditional way but use electricity so it is semiautomatic weaving way. So the fabric can be more vintage and natural. Producible width is so limitative ; only two, but all Hanbok producers make the cloth as these size's fabrics; age-old sizes which are became two of the width of Oksa in entire Korea area. 

Let me explain the features of Korean Silk Dupioni Organza. The Korean Silk Dupioni Organza has not only irregular slubs but also irregular stairs from different thickness parts of thread. These features make transparency difference after dyeing.
These naturally irregulars in texture make the silk more vintage. The below  picture is one of the Korean Silk Dupioni Organza that I use most often. The irregularities of slubs and stairs are enough, not too much so it can be used when I want to make works to be simple and vantage. I will explain the other types of Oksa after explanation about genaral features of Oksa.



The another feature of this silk is that displays like different depth of color with a brightness of the light. This is the most biggest feature of see-through fabrics, nylon chiffon or tulle also have, but the beautifulness of this silk is incommensurale with them. Especially, transparency of  Silk Dupioni Organza  and gloss of silk are united with the light so the patchwork by it looks like staind glass. It is 100% natural silk from nature therefore better in varying intensities of natural light than others.
The next picture is patchwork of Silk Dupioni Organza, you can see the color changing by locations of lightings.

To make a long story short for understanding easily, the Silk Dupioni Organza is vintage organza silk. As I mentioned already, a variety of Silk Dupioni Organza is produced in Korea but they are not assortative. The Oksas, gained from the fibers get tangled up and a thickness difference have irregular stairs and slubs. All kinds of them are called Oksa and are used without division. The sellers sell them without division as well, so I have to see and choose the fabric directly. The Oksa is bit different again even if I buy them from the same seller because of the condition of season and coccons and also the traditional weaving way. It means that the Silk Dupioni Organza that I'm using at the moment is a real natural fabric which can't be made as a same.

I mainly use the Silk Dupioni Organza and I assort the silks in my own way as purposes. Actually, the silk is classifiable detailedly by fabrics thickness and fineness but the differences are so slight as the crafter who use the fabric doesn't really do it. Anyway I'll show you different kinds of Silk Dupioni Organza.

For comparison, this is general silk Organza not Dupioni.(below)
This is the general Korean Oksa(Silk Dupioni Organza), has slubs fitly and texture irregularities frequently. It can be a difference of softness by boiling off way but it is stiff which is a feature of Silk Organza.(below)
This Oksa is woven with less slubs and stairs so it is bit softer and more glossy than Silk Dupioni Organza above. However it's also organza so it has gloss feeling and crispy like paper. People like it more vintage in Korea so usually use the general Oksa above, but I use this one when I want to make the work more modernistic.(below)
This fabric is woven to make dense slubs so that emphasize the vintage feature. so it's expensive than others. This is extremely irregular in texture which is naturally beautiful as itself without any dyeing and more beautiful when it is dyed as natural colors. When I do chemical dyeing, I mix dyeing paints to make the paints look like natural colors and this fabric is suitable for that.(below)

Lastly, it is not Silk Dupioni Organza to be exact, but I want to explain it because it's woven with Silk Dupioni and has see-through feature. This is mix cotton and Silk Dupioni, less soft and stiff than Silk Dupioni Organza. Cotton's features make it's dyeing color light and tone down.(below)
Like this, I assort Oksa into three types and put the fine fabric into three of them at time of purchase.  And I dye this Silk Dupioni Organza and do Patchwork. Also do painting from time to time but that's not easy on it which has a feature like tulle. On the other hand, it is very good for Natural dyes especially with vegetables and flowers because it's a 100% silk. I'm planning to do posting mainly about dyeing, making tie-dyed patterns, sewing, drawing with this silk on this blog. If you have any interests in the Silk Dupioni Organza, please do not hesitate sending me any messages.   euntextile@gmail.com