Ikat

Today I will be designing with turned Ikat.

Ikat is a dyeing technique.First  you put your yarn into a skein then you tie it in places and dye it. I got some information on ikat from a website called www.weavezine.com ,one of my favorite places to get information on weaving. Here Bonnie Tarses gives in great detail how to do a “faux” version on ikat. This is the technique I will be using today. Bonnie says “ the word ikat comes from the Malay-Indonesian word “mengikat” which means “to tie” or “to bind”. In traditional ikat a design  is planned out and drawn onto a full sized cartoon; then the warp is wound and laid out over the cartoon; sections of the design are tied into the warp masking off select portions; finally the warp is dyed, untied, and then put on the loom to weave.

In traditional weft ikat, skeins are wound the desired weaving width, and once again the design is tied into the skein from a cartoon. In both instances, careful planning is required.

To bypass the planning stage and create spontaneous ikat designs, I developed “Turned-Weft Ikat”. Simply stated, I wind and dye skeins as if I was going to create weft ikat, but instead, I make the skeins into balls and then use them to wind a warp.” There is much more to this article that you can read by clicking on the link. http://www.weavezine.com/spring2008/wz_sp08_BonnieTarses.php

After im finish planning this out and dyeing it I will post pictures that I took along the way.

I used some of the techniques that Bonnie shared in her article and some of my own. Here’s how it turned out.

First I dyed the warp

10/2 Tencel

24 epi

12 dent reed

 

Then I wove it using a black weft yarn and plain weave

 

 

up close.

 

 

I am going to try this again using the dyeing strategies I found in the article Bonnie wrote.