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What is Ikat?

8/22/2019

A Japanese weaver weaving a warp-dyed ikat, using indigo-dyed cotton. Jyo81 (ja: User) [CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)]

When I was in Japan many years ago, I visited an artisan village, where traditional Japanese crafts were preserved and demonstrated. I was stunned by the beauty and intricacy of the Yuuki tsumugi 結城紬, a meticulously yarn-dyed silk from that region. I tried on a multi-colored silk kimono that made me feel like a mermaid, so beautiful was it, in greens and blues and pinks. It cost more than my parents' house! My host-father said he thought the dyeing process was needlessly complicated, but I appreciated it very much!

Today, I want to talk about ikat fabric, because I find it fascinating. Ikat (say "EEE-kat") is a yarn-dyed fabric where the yarns are selectively resist dyed before weaving, and the pattern emerges once woven. Some pictures in this post are from Wikimedia Commons (click to see their sourcepages). The ones that don't go to Wikimedia Commons are my own pictures.

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"Red Fox Vintage" dress - pattern fixes

8/19/2019

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Working on the Red Fox Vintage dress again! To refresh your memory, here's a picture of me in the quilting cotton version of this dress, after a day of wear. The benefit of making a test garment from such an unforgiving fabric is that it highlights all the pattern problems so I can fix them. In this case, there are three big issues. Look at the creases and shadows to see:

skirt back is sagging at the waistline -- needs to be tugged upward there;
skirt front -- same problem as skirt back;
poorly drafted sleeve doesn't have enough height in the sleeve cap...
- possibly a related issue, the bodice back near the top may be too broad, which warps the shape of the armscye.

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Draped Pencil Skirt

8/17/2019

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Wow... so I'm a terrible sister. I draped this skirt for my sis in January 2018, and haven't done anything since then (yes, over a year)! Sometimes I find myself with half-finished projects which I want to have done, more than I want to do them! Terrible.

However, as it's been a while since I posted, let me show you the in-progress pictures and explain what I did. Normally, I switch to present tense for the project diary, but this project was so long ago, and the way I did it is not how I would do it today, so I'll stick to past tense.

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