Tag: fabric

Japanese Knot Bag – Sewing Mojo!

I really enjoy sewing, but it has gone by the wayside as I have pursued painting and drawing. Determined to get other areas of interest back into my life, I have taken a few days off from the above, decided to limit it to a max of 2 hours / day, and then decided I needed a simple project to get my interest in sewing back.

It worked!

I looked up bags to sew – free patterns, too – and found a lot of them. The Japanese Knot Bag caught my eye, and this video from http://www.hellosewing.com got my immediate attention. First, the instructions for the bag are written here, and then there is a free pdf for the pattern, and finally there is this video! What a treasure trove of information.

My two cents is watch the video, slow it down a bit, and read the web page. I enjoyed the project enough to research more about the knot bag. On YouTube a lone you will find a variety of tutorials and bag styles. The one I made is from the pdf at hellosewing.com; it is small and will make a good bag for small knitting projects, such as socks.

I was too lazy to dig through my stash of fabrics; instead, I went to the local JoAnn and found sale material and bought enough for 2 purses. I made one yesterday, and total time was about 2 hours, beginning to end. I watched the video, slowed down by 50% to catch a few things, such as seam sewing early on and then how to turn the bag right side out. (Hint – through the opening of the longer strap!)

This is the bag, completed. This is a batik fabric and it is lined with a navy bluish solid color. The handles of the bag are really 2 different lengths. See below!

To close the bag, you pull the longer strap through the opening of the shorter strap. This closes up the bag, cinching it a bit, and the long strap then acts as a handle.

Then my machine presser foot handle decided to die – but it is, I think, a simple fix, and we should be back in business. I have another one to make!

Indigo Batik & Miraculously Easy Wax Removal

Warning!    A very long and windy read.  Get your coffee or tea, put your feet up, and follow along . . .

I was going through my archives thinking I might have written something up about the last time I did indigo dyeing, but I  guess I didn’t.  So, we shall begin sort of at the beginning!

Indigo is a wonderful dye, and I have used a variety of methods to extract the blue color.  Over the 40-odd years I have been dyeing, I have used urine, sulfuric acid, and finally a kit.  The kit is the best and easiest and least time consuming or hazardous.

Indigo is a plant that is used to dye fabrics of all kinds – plant and animal fibers, cotton and silk – for centuries.  In the dye bath, it is a disgusting greenish yellow – not like spring’s new leaves, but a pukey army green.  It also doesn’t smell appetizing. To create a dye bath, you can use all sorts of chemicals, save your urine, or buy a simple kit.  I like the kit that is available from Jacquard – small, easy, convenient.  For the bulk dyer, this would not be a good buy, but for a small once-in-awhile dyer, it is great.  You can buy it from Dharma Trading, Amazon, or KnitPicks, to name a few places.

Indigo Tie Dye Kit

Last year, my MIL Judy came by and we did a bunch of indigo dyeing. We dyed yarn and fabric, doing flammegarn and batik as well.

Flammegarn dyeing involves taking a skein of white yarn and tying off areas of it. The binding material acts as a resist. The yarn is then submerged into the dye bath, and the color is taken up.  Multiple colors can be used, and multiple dippings.  The result is a randomly mottled yarn. I believe this is originally a Scandinavian technique – the name implies such – but I am sure other cultures have done it as well.

Batik is the use of a resist on fabric to prevent colors from dyeing the fabric. Wax is the traditional resist. Multiple layers and colors can be built up, and complex patterns can be created. You can apply the wax with a brush or a stamp, a stencil, or a djanting tool.

Removing the string resist in flammegarn is easy, but removing the wax resist in batik is problematic. Removing the wax from the fabric is a chore. Boiling or near-boiling water is needed to melt the wax. Once that is done, by dipping the cloth multiple times into boiling water, it is then further treated. It can be sent to the dry clearer and chemical solvents used (ick!), or you can iron it between layers of newsprint using a very hot iron to remove the last of the wax. I have always done this, but it never really did the trick. There was always a residual coating of wax that never seemed to leave the fabric, even after multiple washings in hot water, in the sink, in the washing machine, and ironing. However, I have now discovered how to remove wax quite easily!

First, though, let’s back track a bit. Judy took a brush and a lot of wax to her fabric (cotton or linen or a mix thereof we are not sure). Here is her material, dyed and waxed and now awaiting wax removal. This material is very stiff, and if you want to crumple it up in a ball, forget it. Instead, you really have to fold it! The wax then cracks and falls off if it is really thick. I don’t think you want to take it to your sewing machine in this condition! The fabric measures about 40″ wide and about 1.5 yards long.

Yesterday morning, Josh and I worked on getting the wax out. Below you can see what we did. Josh pulled out his brew rig, which runs on natural gas from our home, and set up my 4-gallon pot with water on the middle burner. Behind Josh is his 15 gallon hot liquor tank that he uses to boil water in beer making. It has a temperature gauge on it along with a spigot to which you can attach a hose. You don’t want to lift this boiling water, so he uses the spigot and hose to move hot water to his other kettles when brewing. This set up worked out really well for us as from the liquor tank we could easily and safely move the boiling water into the galvanized wash tub you see next to him. (All that red stuff behind the brew rig are car panels for the 818S!)

The 4-gallon kettle took minutes to bring to a boil, and so we moved it into the galvanized tub. The indigo-dyed cloth was submerged, and stirred. The wax began to melt out of the cloth, and some of the indigo dye bled out. I used wooden dowels and spoons to lift the material in and out of the water, stirring it and mushing it around.

Here is a close-up of the spoon, fabric, melting wax and hot water. Water dripped and splashed into the galvanized tub – I used that to scrub out the dirt before we added the water from the liquor tank. Pretty efficient, eh?

After several dippings and stirrings, the fabric was removed from the 4-gallon kettle. Wax and murky water remained behind. You can see the liquid wax on the top of the water, and the hardened wax on the sides of the pot. It is interesting to note that the water has a greenish cast – water when you are dyeing indigo is also green. The blue color of indigo does not occur until the fabric or yarn is pulled out of the dye bath and exposed to oxygen.

Using the dowel and spoon, the fabric was lifted out of the pot and allowed to drip into the 4-gallon kettle. Here are the remains of the wax after the water was discarded. This was taken the next morning after the water had cooled and the wax had risen to the surface of the water. You don’t want to be pouring this stuff down your pipes!

The secret for easy wax removal is now revealed!  Read on, oh fans, read on!

The wash tub was then filled with hot water from the liquor tank – 15 gallons of boiling water. About 1/4 cup of dish soap (Dawn concentrate) was added to the water and stirred into the water. And that is the secret! The soap emulsifies the wax and allows it to be dispersed into the water or something.

The fabric wanted to float to the surface of the water, even after squishing out the air bubbles. I stirred and lifted the fabric again, making sure to mix it all up really well in the soapy water. Interestingly, no suds developed. Before sealing it to cool, I weighted the fabric down in the tub with some bricks to ensure it did not rise to the surface and collect any wax which had been removed. Then, we sealed if for the night! We used the wheels from the donor WRX. Our goofy dogs wanted to taste the soapy water, and I wasn’t inclined to let them indulge.

The wash tub and tires sat over night, to let the water to cool. The bricks would prevent the fabric from floating and getting re-waxed. The next morning, the tires were removed, and this is what we saw! No wax on the cold water’s surface!

I was really quite surprised. Never have I had such an easy time removing wax from fabric before. I pulled the material out of the tub, placing it into a bucket, and taking it to the kitchen sink. I wore some nitrile gloves (I didn’t want to turn blue) and rinsed and squeezed the fabric in the sink. From there, once the water was clear, the whole thing was carted to the washing machine, loaded in with hot water and laundry soap. When the cycle was done, into the dryer  for the final step of ridding the batik of wax.

And the washer and dryer are perfectly fine, thank you very much.

The fabric is now supple, easily crumpled into a ball, and ready to be sewn into a skirt of some sort. I think it would make a great sarong! Here are more pictures of the final cloth – all it is needs is a bit of ironing and styling.

A close up shows how the wax cracks and the dye seeps in, as well as how it colors areas with less wax. The thicker the wax, the less likely the indigo or dye is to seep in. Because the wax was thickly applied, cracks easily develop. Areas where thinner wax is applied and not worked into the fibers are more likely to take some dye, albeit less intensely.

Finally, a closer shot showing the weave of the fabric – and I think it is linen! The texture of the weave is more irregular that cotton, but the fine weave of the fabric made me wonder.

And, at last, this beautiful indigo-dyed linen fabric is crumpled up and ready for its next iteration!

Handsewn Hippari Top

Awhile ago I wrote a bit about John Marshall, a fabric artist and clothing designer who is very influenced by traditional Japanese clothing and dyeing.  He is the author of an excellent book on traditional Japanese clothing construction, Make Your Own Japanese Clothes. In his own work, John moves beyond the ordinary into the extraordinary, with an excellent eye for detail and color.   As an instructor, he is well-organized and clear, and very knowledgeable.  As an artist, there are few to compare.  His book is just like him – full of information that is detailed (but not annoyingly so) – and moves a traditional clothing into a modern vein.

Traditional Japanese clothing is made from fabric measuring about 13-14 inches wide.  As a result, buying fabric requires buying yards of it!  It comes in varying lengths on bolts, depending on what the final product is to be.  There are traditional lengths for haori, for kimono, and so on.  Modern Japanese stores carry modern fabrics, but probably have access to traditional fabrics.  In the U.S., patterns for making traditional Japanese and Asian clothing may be found at Folkwear, a company with patterns for traditional clothing from around the world.  These patterns allow you to use modern fabrics in modern widths, such as 45″ wide.  The beauty of John’s book is that if you have Japanese fabric in traditional widths, you can use the patterns he provides without too much work.  The selvages of the material are incorporated into the clothing construction, and sewing is minimal.  Seams do not need to be finished to prevent raveling.  The range of clothing is narrow, but the variety comes in the patterns of the fabrics themselves.

The hippari is a wraparound top, essentially unisex according to Marshall, but generally worn by women.  The male version of the hippari is the jimbei, another wraparound top but with side vents for coolness.  The illustration on the above left is from page 83 of John’s book.  He writes:

Of construction similar to the jimbei, except for tapered sleeves that stay out of the way and sewn (closed) side seams, the hippari is an infinitely practical as well as attractive top.

The hippari I made is an amalgamation of the two styles.  I created vented sleeves for coolness, as I use it as a sort of smock over my regular clothes.  The sleeves are gathered to keep them up and out of the way.  The fabric is a modern kasuri fabric woven in the traditional width.  The bolt measured about 10 yards in length, and using the layout in Make Your Own Japanese Clothes, I created a custom-fitted top.

I decided to sew my entire hippari by hand.  I used 100% cotton thread and tested out some of the techniques illustrated in John’s book, as well as techniques I improvised and use in my own home-made clothing.

The idea of sewing clothing by hand probably seems daunting.  I know for a fact my own handsewing is not what it could be with hours and hours of practice.  I can do tidy little stitches, but sewing a backstitch for yards is not easy to do.  The material needs to be stretched taut for the stitching to be easily accomplished.  I stretched mine out on a large embroidery hoop at times, and at other times I just held it, stitched, and hoped for the best.

Sewing birds and clamps have been used for centuries to make this job easier, and traditional Japanese sewing boxes come equipped with just such items.  If you wanted, you could use a C-clamp to hold your material in place.  The nice thing, though, about sewing the hippari was the crispness of the fabric – it really allowed me to sew much more easily than a soft, drapey fabric.  Washing has softened the material, and, yes, it did shrink, but not too much.

This photo shows the open armhole, which actually is very nice if you are planning to wear the hippari over other clothes. It gives a little more room for movement, as well as helps keep you cooler. As I tend to get warm easily, I decided to do the vented sleeves found in the jimbei. If you do this, be sure to reinforce the vent, otherwise you may need to re-stitch your seam.

A running stitch or back stitch may be used for the majority of the seams. The same can be used to hold the seams in place, such as under the arm. The straight edges of the selvages mean no finishing of cut edges, as you can see from the final photos below.  Below, the running stitch is shown for the back center seam of the hippari in the left hand photo, and to the right is illustration of the selvage edge.  The selvages are also seen in the photo above.

For greater detail of the hippari, click the next photo.

Altogether, this is an easy project if you want something different to do.

Yarns of the City – 27 May 2009

Fabric Town USA, Ventura, CA

I love this store!

I’ve been shopping here for years. This is an old-fashioned, family-run store, located in the middle of Main Street of Ventura, CA. There are fabrics, sewing and knitting supplies, upholstery materials, patterns and buttons. Everything is beautifully displayed – the plain exterior belies the inside, trust me – and the service is superb. Many people who work at Fabric Town have been there a long time, and the service provided is some of the best by staff who know what they are talking about. Change is counted back to you, too, so no one is dumping a bunch of bills and coins in your hand. There is a courteousness here which dates back to earlier days.

Fabric Town carries high quality fabrics, if you sew. Silk, cottons, wools. Patterns include Vogue, Butterick, McCalls, and Simplicity, and some of the newer firms as well. Notions for sewing are all over, with a good button selection, zippers, pins, and whatever you might need. All is very reasonably priced. If you quilt, you won’t be disappointed, either.

Yarns and knitting supplies include acrylics made by Red Heart and Paton’s, as well as the good wools, cottons, silk blends, merinos, bamboo and such by Cascade, Berocco, Trendsetter, Crystal Palace, Knit One Crochet Two, and others. There are sock yarns, DK, sport, aran weight. The yarns are divided into categories, such as sock, and then nicely displayed on glass or wooden shelves. The book selection is not large, but the ones they have are nicely chosen. They also carry Clover knitting notions and my favorite aluminum needles, Susan somebody! They do not have an extensive class schedule, but have some knitting classes posted here and there.

Here is where they are located:
2686 E Main St
Ventura, CA 93003
(805) 643-3434

Although the address is on Main Street, you have to go around to the back, next to the BofA teller area. Check them out! They are open 7 days a week, too.