Process for making an Ikat:
Various designs must be drawn out on paper. After doing rough sketches, take the best design and draw it out on graph paper according to scale and decide on colours. After the design and colours are planned, the final design will be painted.
To calculate the amount of threads for the warp of the woven piece, wind the yarn tightly around a ruler for 3 centimetres and divide the number of threads by three e.g. 30 threads divided by 3 = 10 threads per cm. The design is 96cm wide, thus it will consist of 960 threads. The length of the warp is 450cm (including 100cm for waste and shrinkage). Bunches consisting of 30 threads each are put on the warping frame with a total of 33 bunches being made.
To bind the yarn, stretch a bunch of warps between 2 “G-clamps”.
The design is divided into sections from A to H to keep track of binding. A tag on each of the warp bunches mark which section is being bound for dyeing.
Sections for the first colour are measured and marked off with a pencil. Strips cut from plastic bags are then tightly bound around the bunch of warps to function as a resist for the dye.
The method of dyeing used is over dyeing and works as follows:
The design consists of 4 colours, namely red, blue, green and purple and there are three primary dye colours: yellow, turquoise and magenta, the principle is the same as any CMYK colour mixing.
• Yellow + Magenta = Red/ Orange
• Yellow + Turqoise = Green
• Magenta + Turqoise = Purple
To use the method of over dyeing means that the colour of the dye will not be mixed inside the pot, but on the yarn itself. It minimizes the amount of time spent dyeing and binding the yarn.
The first colour that will be dyed is yellow, although there is no yellow on the design. The yarn is bound so that all the spaces that must be green and red are left open.
To mix the dye add 1 part yellow pigment to 4 parts salt to 1 part soda ash in a pot of water on a heat source.
Stir the ingredients and when the water boils insert the wet yarn into the pot.
Stir the liquid for 30min to ensure even coverage of the dye. Remove from the heat source and let the pot stand for an hour before rinsing.
After rinsing put the warps on a flat surface overnight to dry and to prevent the dye seeping into white areas.
Rinse the warps a second time and hang to dry. When the warps are dry, remove the plastic bindings. If there are still some damp areas, hang the warps out again to dry and prevent mildew from forming.
Repeat the process with Magenta, leaving open the spaces that must be red and purple on the design. The last process will be Turquoise where the spaces that must be green, purple and blue will be left open.
The warps are now ready to be sorted and put on the loom.
As soon as the warps are rolled up, combed and the ends cut it is time to thread the yarn onto the loom.
After all the threads are pulled through at a width of 12 threads per centimetre the threads are “milked” by gently tugging an each thread to pull it straight and untangle threads.
The threads are tied into bunches of 24 threads per bunch and tensioned at the front of the loom. Then the test weave can begin.
During the test weave trouble shooting is done and mistakes in the threading can be fixed.
The final product: Olaf
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