Saturday, May 20, 2017

Mistakes



One of my mentors always used to say "If you aren't making mistakes, you aren't learning anything."  And would then share her latest 'mistakes' and the lessons she'd learned from them.

So very early in my career I learned that displeasing results were not terminal, just a stepping stone on the journey of learning.

This series of towels is meant to use up a bunch of yarn that I either inherited or purchased to re-sell.  I began, as I usually do, by making a striped design that appealed to me (based on the Fibonacci series) and then began to play with the colours to go into those stripes.

I set myself some design constraints:  the centre stripe would be one of the variegated cotton yarns I'd bought to sell, the weft would be yarn from Lynn's Legacy or, if that didn't have the right colour for the warp, from cotton slub I'd bought to sell.

The centre stripe on this warp is a rather dull and fairly dark varigation with a 'sad' green (with a bit of blue), lavender, and a dark-ish greyed blue.  I didn't have the right shade of lavender so I went with a quite dark value purple, which I'm still not sure I like but does give the rather dull warp a little 'zing'.  And of course I never judge a textile on the loom but only after wet finishing.

The colour palette isn't to my personal taste, but for those who like more subdued hues, I think this is working ok.  In spite of that dull beige stripe which, quite frankly, I agonized over.

The weft is a dull sage green which seems to be working as I'd hoped and pulling all the different colours together visually.  

Currently reading Hidden Figures.  I bought the DVD and will watch that with Mary in June.  But movies never have the scope to go into detail so I'm glad I'm reading the book beforehand.

3 comments:

Rhonda from Baddeck said...

I think you've done a lovely job of harmonizing the colours. Great idea to give yourself those parameters to get started - and to make a dent in several different stashes at once.

Peg Cherre said...

Very earthy - reminds me of the colors of the west. Or of the lavendar fields in the fall. While I choose brighter colors for my personal use, plenty of people will love these.

Meg said...

Do let us know about the book. I LOVED the film but knew right away the book would have, oh, so much more, and intend to get my hands on it. (And, no, I haven't been in the mood to be able to discuss weaving mistakes for about a year now.)