Tender Co. Denim

[johnye]

On 3/29/2018 at 1:00 PM, rodeo bill said:

^great fits! thanks so much for posting, and I'm so pleased these have worked out- you've got a lovely collection coming together!

Here's a little project I've been putting together over the last couple of months. It's a display-style clock for GSTP, made from a Smith's clock which had a broken electric movement and a very rusty dial and hands, but a lovely intact bakelite case and glass. Here it is reborn:

the dial and hands were both hand painted by the canal boat painter who does wallets and belts for the Trestle Shop, as well as some graphics for prints a few years ago. Both were painted on the back of the original, so nothing's been taken away- I could flip over the dial and hands and they'd be as Smith's intended!

The stepped bakelite case is really lovely:

The movement I had which would fit the hours hand wasn't right for the minutes. I may drill out the minutes hand at some point, but for now I'm using it as a one-hander. I rather like how it makes it look like a scientific instrument, or perhaps a regulator clock, while at the same time being more relaxing to look at than a two-hander clock.

 

William, that GS/TP wall clock is stunning! Is that something that will be available for purchase in the future?

Wanted to share something a little different... my Tender mug collection. Have a special patina on one of them that I dropped and cracked. I was about to throw it away when my wife told me I could cook it in milk and seal it up. It's been going strong for a year now with daily use! Any other colors planned, WIlliam? Would love to see one in carrot or red wattle.

[rodeo bill]

On 24/04/2018 at 4:36 PM, johnye said:

William, that GS/TP wall clock is stunning! Is that something that will be available for purchase in the future?

Wanted to share something a little different... my Tender mug collection. Have a special patina on one of them that I dropped and cracked. I was about to throw it away when my wife told me I could cook it in milk and seal it up. It's been going strong for a year now with daily use! Any other colors planned, WIlliam? Would love to see one in carrot or red wattle.

Thank you! I'm really pleased you like the clock. I'm afraid this isn't likely to be available to buy- I'd love to do GS/TP clocks at some point, but this piece is really a one-off, and it would be very difficult to ship- the glass is real glass, and the hand isn't fitted securely enough to be able to ship without coming loose, I don't think. For now it's just for the studio, sorry. 

I'm so pleased to see your family of mugs all together, they look great (lovely table surface too). Really interesting to hear about the milk fix- I'll give it a try if and when something gets cracked at home.

These mugs aren't actually coloured with the clothing natural dyes- I did look into it, but the firing temperatures of the ceramics would incinerate any of the delicate vegetable pigments, and even the mineral ones (like red or yellow ochre) would discolour. Instead, they're glazed with coloured metal salts, which turn bright colours in the kiln. I will have some new plain colours coming in over the next few weeks, but in the meantime I've just received and listed these "DEKK" mugs:

These are hand engraved and washed with coloured slip, taken from illustrations made for Tender's first season of Tshirts, in 2010, by a close family fried, Dorrit Dekk (1917-2014). There's more about Dorrit way back at the beginning of this thread, but she was a wonderful artist and designer, and very supportive of Tender from the beginning! The drawings were based on animals from Jorge Luis Borges' Book of Imaginary Beings and I'm particularly pleased with how they look on these mugs- I think Dorrit would approve.

[rodeo bill]

I mentioned 10oz Cross-Weave denim a couple of pages back- it's used for new season Tesseract and Pullover shirts, but I've just received lightweight jeans in the same fabric:

this cloth is woven in England using the same 25-dips rope dyed ringspun US cotton indigo yarn that's woven into the standard Japanese 16oz selvage Tender denim. However instead of having an indigo warp with an ecru weft (fill), this is woven sideways, on an ecru warp. Here's a closeup of the fabric oriented looking along the warp, as it would be on the loom:

you can see the white yarn is pointed up and down, and the indigo goes across. You can also see the twill runs from top right to bottom left, so it's a right hand twill.

However the jeans are cut across the fabric, without a side seam, so when you make the panels up into a garment and hold them right-way-up, the fabric is now at right angels to how it was woven, like this:

now you can see the indigo yarn runs up and down, with the ecru running across it, giving the effect of normal denim. You'll also notice, however that in this orientation the twill appears left-to-right, ie left hand twill. One cool thing about this, which I thought should happen, but wasn't sure if it would until the garments were made up and washed, is that they twist anti-clockwise, like a normal left hand twill pair of jeans:

there's no outseam to show the twist, but the inseam very clearly moves considerably round the leg. This is a really satisfying proof of concept! Less easy to test, but these jeans fell really soft and drapey, partly because they're lightweight, but I like to think also because of the untwisting and relaxing of yarn in a left hand twill fabric.

If anyone's interested we have 129s, 130s, and 132s in stock on the Stores now, and they'll also be with various stockists over the next week or so.

[Foxy2]

Tender Type 742 paired with TCB

[rodeo bill]

rep's still not working for me, but that looks fantastic! Here's a preview of how it'll look in a few months with plenty of washes (this is my pullover):

[Foxy2]

this would probably take me a couple of years getting there...something for the old days to look forward to.

the amount of slant/spirality got me thinking - it's a common issue in weft knitting, but the degree that we observe here is quite remarkable. as you said, the yarns are, more or less, yarns prepped and used in denim weaving, right?
I think this makes a fine point in demonstrating that the yarns (i.e. yarn twist/finish) play an equal part in the observed leg twist of jeans.

Edited May 11, 2018 by Foxy2

[rodeo bill]

^yes, the yarn is absolutely denim weaving yarn (I get it direct from the weavers), and is not intended for knitting. It's also un-skewed and un-finished, so it's going to give the maximum possible skew (which is what I specified when I was originally developing the Tender denim fabric). As I understand it, twisting in fabric is indeed all down to the yarn. The direction of twist comes from the type of fabric woven, but the propensity for the yarn to want to unwind is what causes twisting in the garment. I really like these knitted pieces as a demonstration of this, too :-)

[rodeo bill]

further to that, notice in the photo of my pullover that the twist abruptly stops at the line between the main pullover and the rib at the bottom. Rib is made by alternating lines of knit and purl (basically forwards and backwards knitting), so the twists in each direction counteract each other. This makes it, in respect to twisting, exactly the equivalent of a broken twill denim, which was indeed developed to prevent leg twist.

[JDelage]

@rodeo bill - how do you expect the cross weave denim to evolve compared to your usual denim?

[rodeo bill]

I don't actually have a pair of these myself, but I do have a shirt in this fabric, which I've worn quite a bit. The indigo yarn is the same as the usual denim, so there's an equally large amount of indigo in the fabric, however because the ecru warp is a lot lighter and softer than the ecru weft of the standard denim, and because this fabric is unsized (not starched at all, which is not the same as sanforized or de-sized, where the fabric is starched for weaving then has the starch taken back out) it doesn't form hard creases in the same way as the normal denim does. This in turn means you won't get such defined fades. My expectation is that it'll be slow to fade, but because it falls so nicely and is extremely comfortable to wear they don't need the same break-in period you'd get with heavier jeans.

[JDelage]

Makes sense. Thank you!

[rodeo bill]

Yesterday I received a copy of Fashioned from Nature, which accompanies the new V&A exhibition:

very exciting, there's a small reference to Tender:

it's really nice to be in a book about the wider fashion/clothing world, and the themes in this exhibition/book look really interesting and well-researched.

[Foxy2]

I will have to pay V&A a visit this May...

in the meantime, I took a few more pics:

[Bobbo]

^ Really intrigued with this fabric. Do you have more pictures of your worn pullover William?  

[rodeo bill]

thanks! Here are some taken today, about 1 month on from the pictures on the last page:

(I mentioned it before, but for the record, this is tagged size 1 but it's just because the knitters had run out of labels, it's actually somewhere between a 2 and a 3, and fits slim on me)

 

[rodeo bill]

while I have the camera out, I did post some similar images on watches & denim a couple of weeks back, but they disappeared. This is my GS/TP Trade Pattern on a NOS Swiss-made rubber Tropic strap. I really like how it wears on this strap!

[oomslokop]

new and old blues

[goodrain]

who dis? 

jk nice haircut!

[rodeo bill]

looking good! The pullover and jeans look really great- thanks for the photo. And yeah, the haircut really suits you 

[diggers]

4 hours ago, oomslokop said:

new and old blues

 

warrior shoes?

[oomslokop]

1 hour ago, diggers said:

warrior shoes?

iyes

[MJF9]

^ big reps for those most excellent blues ooms and rodeo bill!

[rodeo bill]

Shin at the excellent Mode Man in Seoul just sent some nice images from a recent shoot which show a few shirt styles really well, here they are, with thanks!

 

top-bottom, fawn logwood dyed 10oz cross-weave denim Type 483 Tesseract Shirt, rinsed indigo pick stripe lawn Type 483 Tesseract Shirt, Prussian blue wool calico Type 440 Folded Pocket Shirt

[Niro]

Looks especially boss in the last pic!

[bartlebyyphonics]

+ 1 agreed

[bartlebyyphonics]

+ 2x fave recent IG-ings...

 

 

 

 

[rodeo bill]

Here are some great images from Neighbour, in Vancouver. They always do beautiful photography, and these show things particularly well I think. Anything not Tender in these pictures is Margaret Howell or Niuhans.

[Niro]

@rodeo bill How are you getting on with the Whopper jacket? Any evo pics?

[julian-wolf]

Context:

On 3/10/2018 at 9:59 AM, julian-wolf said:

Four pairs of socks came in the mail yesterday, and they're just what I was hoping for! The weight + feel of the cotton / wool pair, in particular, is really great.

I have a question about how these may react to hot water. Two of the pairs I decided on (one mohair and one alpaca) are undyed, and I'm hoping to dye one or both pairs (partly to be able to tell them apart, but mostly just for a fun project). […]

On 3/19/2018 at 7:39 AM, julian-wolf said:

[…] I've noticed plenty of yarrow growing nearby here that I've yet to put to use; I think I may pick a few bunches one of these weekends and try for a nice khaki green for the alpaca. I'll be sure to check back in with some before + after shots of how it goes.

Well…I've found out that yarrow takes a lot longer than I'd guessed to flower (the first few are only just now starting to show petals). Impatient as I am, I spent a while yesterday looking into other khaki-ish dyes that I might be able to spin up from the neighborhood greenery, and came across a great website describing different forms of eucalyptus dyeing: https://sallyblake.com/eucalyptus-dyes-1/. Went for a walk in the afternoon to collect leaves, which are now boiling away into colorful pot liquor. Some "before" photos follow.

A baby eucalyptus. The leaves were oily and pungent, so I'm hoping they'll be effective. Considering that I was right in the middle of a eucalyptus forrest, it surprised me how few of the adult trees had harvestable leaves within reach. Since they're majorly invasive here (not to mention flammable), I didn't feel too bad about getting to them while they were young.

Long pants and long sleeves on a hot day, to ward off the poison oak.

A certain variety of tiny little insect liked to hatch and grow on the newer leaves. By the end of the walk, I'd developed an unreasonably extreme aversion to them, and found myself completely avoiding any bunches of leaves that they inhabited.

Finally, the dry socks before their pre-dying soak in water.

More photos will follow!

[julian-wolf]

double post, whoops

Well, might as well make use of the post since it's already here: the dyeing went great! Both materials (mohair and alpaca) took up color. One pair is actually pretty close to the classic greenish brown khaki that I was going for, and the other is more yellow. I'm not sure, yet, which is which (they'll need to dry out for me to feel them and see), but in any case the difference'll be good for telling them apart down the line. Looking forward to taking some photos tomorrow when there's some natural light.

Edited May 28, 2018 by julian-wolf
un-double post