My S and Z Spinning Study

I've been busily working on my presentation for the conference in Kalamazoo, but I thought it would be nice include my documentation from my study on the blog. So, if you are interested, you can find it under Projects. You will need to look at both the words and the samples for it to make sense. Most of the photos do not show the pattern very clearly (real life is much better), but at least you might get an idea of what I was up to.

King's and Queen's Arts & Sciences Competition

Saturday was King's and Queen's A & S competition. I went to the event to support my apprentice sister who was being inducted into the Order of the Laurel. Of course that meant, to keep the surprise, I had to enter the event. So, I entered my spinning experiment.

It made such a plain display compared to the work of all the other amazingly talented entrants. But, as I discovered last year, it is great fun to get to talk to people about what you are passionate about (whether that happens to be thread or subtleties - you should have seen the amazing dragon!). I was lucky enough to have a table in the sunlight. The best thing of all was that as I began to explain what I was testing - the impact of spin direction on cloth design - even before I was done, people's face would light up and they would pick up a sample and say "oh, I can see it!"

This is Icelandic, my most obvious sample, but it was usually a white sample that people picked up.

As I worked on the project I had begun to wonder if the effect was really real, or if people beside me, or experienced weavers would also see the change between S and Z threads. It really made me happy when people whose expertise was pottery, or woodworking, or metalsmithing, could also pick up on the subtle change. 

Unlike other years, the King and Queen narrowed the field down to 5 finalists with a wide range of talents, before choosing their champions. 

In the end, I was chosen as this year's Queen's Champion. It is a great honor, which I hope I can live up to.

the S and Z spinning experiment

I have spun the wool of 6 different breeds and woven 10 samples to test the effects of S and Z spinning in fabric design. You may think that is excessive, but it was so much fun, I kept wanting to try another breed. I won't bore you with all the results. The Romney wool was the most successful. Whether the wool was carded or combed, dyed or natural, the plaid pattern is easily seen.

The photos don't do it justice, but the slightly lighter stripes in this carded wool sample are the S threads.

While there is a slight variation in the natural fiber color, the threads are actually quite uniform in color. The stripes are formed by the change between S and Z threads.

I will have to add weaving a larger, usable piece to my 2013 to-do list. I already know from my samples that the larger the piece is, the more noticeable the pattern is as the fabric shifts in the light.