Soy Silk Scarf Drafts

Turns out I had two more skeins of rainbow dyed soy silk hiding, so my total has jumped to about 12 ounces. Yikes. That makes about 4800 yards, so now I'm planning a warp that is long enough for 2 scarfs about 10" wide in the reed. I'll sett the warp at 30 epi.

I wove a soy silk scarf in undyed "white" color in December 2005 and it was sett at 28 epi.



I felt that was just a little bit too loose, although it feels nice. So I'll go with 30.

I've got 2 drafts now. This is Twill 1, which I got from Handweaving.net:



And this is Twill 2, which I came up with while playing with tie-up substitutions in my weaving software:



The next step will be winding the warp!

All My Soy Silk Dye Experiments (Group Photo)

There is a little over 8 oz. of yarn here. At 6400 yards per pound, that gives me a lot of yarn to play with. I'm thinking a scarf. I spent some time downloading 12 harness twill patterns from handweaving.net last night, and I think I have my draft. Coming soon!

All My Soy Silk Dye Experiments in One Warp

I went through a period, about a year and half ago, when I was really excited about the possibilities of this new fiber soy silk. I thought, since it wasn't widely available in a lot of colorways, and certainly not as handpainted or space dyed (except for a one or two websites here and there), that I could do some dye experiments, see what happened, and perhaps start selling handpainted soy silk in the same way that I sell handpainted tencel and other cellulose fibers.

However.

Soy silk is a protein fiber. And needs acid dyes. Or at least fiber reactive dyes set with heat and acid instead of alkaline fixer. I bought a few acid dyes. I tried Gaywool, because it was available at my local fiber shop and you need to support your local fiber shops! It is very expensive, and I only bought three colors.

Also, at that time I was going through a crockpot dyeing phase. A lot of crockpot dyeing. Trying to get a system going, because I like systems, and you need systems for repeatable results. So I was dyeing 16/2 soy silk in 1 oz. batches in the crockpot. I tried solid colors, and I tried rainbow dyeing. The colors were ok, but nothing great. Solid colors never would level completely. Then I discovered that this is called "Kettle Dyeing". Yeah, that's it....

Anyway, the strongest colors in my experiments came when I used my old faithful fiber reactive dyes. I soaked a tiny skein in full strength white vinegar for (maybe) a half hour. Then I took it out, painted it with my fiber reactive dyes, wrapped it in plastic, and put it in the microwave to heat set. I was pretty tentative with the timing. I didn't want to burn it. And this experiment was the best of all!

Now I've got umpteen balls of kettle dyed, rainbow dyed, and microwave dyed 16/2 soy silk, a 12 harness table loom that is sadly under-used, and a blog. The perfect storm.

Photos to come.

Soybean scarf draft

This is the weave draft that I used for this Soybean Twill scarf. It is from Eleanor Best's book Weaves: A Design Handbook. It is a braided twill for the smallest number of harnesses she has examples for. It starts with 8, goes to 12, and then 16 harnesses.

I really like this draft, and have used it for other scarfs. I actually like it better with finer yarn, like 10/2 tencel sett about 30 ends per inch.

My So-Called Scarf

soybean scarf
Originally uploaded by sapoague

So I wanted to try this new yarn I found at elann.com. It's called Soybean, and it comes in an undyed creamy natural color, specifically marketed for dyeing and knitting (or weaving). I ordered four skeins. It's a fingering weight (for knitters), about 167 yards per 50 gram skein. It works out to the rough equivalent of 1600 yards per pound, and I figured it would be a nice weight for a twill scarf.

I dyed the yarn with Pro Chem One Shot acid dyes. Three skeins were dyed in solid colors, and one skein I painted with all four colors and then heat set. I heat set all of the dyes in the microwave, which is my favorite place to dye for acid dyes. The colors are Toffee, Rust, Pumpkin and Gold. (I've tried the crockpot, and that works well too, but you can't beat the microwave for speed.)

This is an eight shaft twill, sett at 18 ends per inch. It was 6 inches wide in the reed. Four skeins is just about the right amount. I had a little bit of 2 of the solid colors left over, but not much!

I'm going to try and insert the weave draft for this scarf soon!

It wove up quickly. I twisted the fringes and then hand washed it and air dried it. I pressed it with a cool iron. I don't know what it is about this scarf. It has a nice sheen and supple drape. I guess I'm just not that excited about the colors. Soybean (or soy silk) takes the acid dyes a little differently than wool does, and I've been working on the same four colors that I ordered from Pro over a year ago. I guess I need to branch out!

Also, it's really hard to photograph handwovens and get the colors right, that's bugging me right now. But this is the best representation so far, with the light streaming in my studio and the scarf tied around my swift. (This is real spur of the moment craft photography!)