Painted Warp

painted warp - rose and greens


same painted warp - blue/greens with more rose coming up


Back to working on the multitude of painted warps. It was hard to get a picture of the colours as they shifted through the warp.

This warp is fairly subdued with browned roses, deep blues and greens. I'm using chocolate for weft. The dark brown has a reddish cast so I figured it would highlight the slightly brownish roses. Click on the photos for close ups.

I don't do my own fibre reactive dyeing but get Teresa Ruch to do it.

http://teresaruchdesigns.com

Teresa will have a booth at Convergence. She also dyed the HGA special colourway for Convergence this year.

It's been great working with another creative person. We both have similar tastes in colour palettes so I pretty much give her carte blanche to do what she wants. About all I'll say is "I need some nice reds" or blues or whatever, send her the warps and then dive in when they come back all pretty. :)

The warp is a strand of soy protein fibre (sorry - just cannot call it 'silk') and one of bamboo. The two yarns take the dyes very differently. The most effective weave structure is plain weave, I think. I did a bunch with fancy twills, but the weave structure and the contrast between the two yarns and their different colours meant a textile that was overly textural to my eye. So it's back to basics. :)

I've got 3 boxes of warps waiting to be woven, so that's next on my priority list for the small loom.

After rummaging in the store room I cobbled together enough yarn for another tea towel warp. This extremely fine linen goes a long way! I may have to put one more warp onto the loom after the next one to use it up.

That's one of the benefits of working with fine threads though. They don't cost substantially more than fat threads, and you get hours of play time out of them.

It's one of the biggest reasons why I urge people to become more efficient. The more efficient you are, the less fine threads will intimidate. If you can thread 300 ends in an hour, there will be less resistance to using a thread that requires 30+ epi. :)