Dye don'ts

Live and learn. And then learn some more. Repeat.

Some of what I learned on this go-round is new to me, some not so much, although a different context.

Back in April I hand painted some warps, one of which was based on a painting of a wood duck. (See it here.) I was looking forward to that warp, and wove it in May.

On the loom, I was happy. For a while.

Because I was inspired by the wood duck, I wanted to use a weave pattern that was reminiscent of feathers. And I knew I wanted to use a dark weft to create more of the look of the painting. Apparently I forgot to take a photo of the first scarf, using black weft while it was on the loom. Suffice it to say that after about a foot I knew it was going to be too dark. I should have simply stopped then, started with a new color weft, and not looked back, but I didn’t. I wove the whole thing with the black weft. Ugh.

So for the next weft I chose a brownish red. I liked how it was looking on the loom, enjoying both the colors and the weave structure.

I tried a few different wefts for scarf number 3, settling on a sage-y green. You can see here that the painted warp was a bit blotchy. Too many color changes that were too different – not smooth transitions.

That was my new learning with this warp. Think more about how and when the colors shift. I am not proud of this run of scarves and don’t expect them to sell well.

Nothing I can do about it now.

So in my desire to weave more scarves for my upcoming shows, I decided to adapt a pattern I’d looked at several times before from a Handwoven book, Best of Handwoven Scarves on Eight Shafts.

As my readers know, I usually warp my loom for 3 scarves, but this time I didn’t. I warped for only 1, because I only had enough of the yarn for the stripes for 1 scarf. Boy am I glad that’s what I did.

I wasn’t crazy about the pattern on the loom, but was hoping I’d like it better after wet finishing. Hah!

I was using some professionally hand painted yarns designed for cross stitch, which the web tells me is also used by quilters. Well, as soon as they hit the water those colors ran like mad. I might have been able to predict that, but these were, like I said, professionally dyed yarns – Watercolours by Caron – and I expected professional results. Nothing on the tag about running.

Look at the aura of dye around these yarns after the scarf had dried.

And if that weren’t bad enough, the two sides of the scarf apparently touched each other while they were drying, and one side got a big blotch of pink dye on the white area.

I’m holding off on ironing, as the heat will set those colors as is. I’m going to try another hand wash, this time using those magic Color Catcher sheets. I don’t know that they’ll help, but they sure won’t hurt. But this scarf may just be for the scrap bin.

June 15th, 2017 | 

9, 10, but no big fat hen

After my success with my handmade semi-rigid heddle, I thought I was set for the real thing. Yes, the yarns were slightly different, but that shouldn’t present a particular problem. So I measured out the warp I intended to use, beamed it, and threaded it through my new ‘equipment.’

Then the trouble started. I couldn’t get decent sheds. Every single time I was fussing with the threads to get them to separate. Then I realized what the problem was...yarn fuzz.

See the fuzz my arrow is pointing to? It was caused by the simple friction of the yarn, and it caused my string heddles to stick together. The yarns could not move up and down as needed, especially those that weren’t actually in the heddles but rather between them.

I pulled the fuzz out the best I could, but within a few passes of my shuttle they were all fuzzed up again. Clearly another fail. So cut out the small amount of weaving I’d done and removed that homemade heddle.

There was only one possibility left: clamp together 2 rigid heddles so my threads would be sett closer together. If this didn’t work I’d have to give up on the idea. I’ve only clamped 2 heddles together like this a few times before, and threading 2 rigid heddles i a bit tricky. Especially since for this weaving it isn’t a standard threading. But I went slowly and got it done.

Next was to weave up another logo.

I’d put painters tape on my front beam to keep the weaving at the width I believed I needed. But now since I was using 10/2 instead of 8/2 yarn, that 1.5′′ was too wide. You can see that I narrowed the width as I wove. That was on purpose to see if I could make it more narrow, and if so, if it would look good. I thought it would work, but wanted to make one good logo before I fully committed to this demo. Allow me to present logo #10.

FINALLY!!! Now I can get back to weaving things for my upcoming shows!

I did realize that there are some things you haven’t seen. So here are the finished pansies scarves. (Scroll down to see the pansies warp) First up is woven with fine dark purple weft, and I changed the direction of the curves at random along its length

Same weft for the second scarf, but the treadling is all advancing, no curves.

Last I used a black weft. I only had enough length left for a cowl, but it’s plenty long for that. I used a regular repeat for the curve on this one.

I am happy with them and have gotten compliments, but I wonder if I would have liked them better if I’d left them in stripes instead of doing parallel threading, so that the colors would have stood on their own more. What do you think?

June 6th, 2017 |