If you were asked to pick the colors of winter, which would you choose?
My project idea
is to make four nature themed dishtowels, one in different seasonal colors. Since it's been snowing,
winter is the season I thought I'd
start with. For color inspiration,
I chose this photo, thanks to
our recent winter storm.
It isn't a stripe inspiring photo, so I created a color palette.
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| It's interesting that in the photo the right most cone of yarn is greenish. In real life, it's brownish looking. Ditto with the 2nd to the left, which is bluish here. |
Next I used a
Random Stripe Generator
to create some stripes. Their color choices didn't quite match mine, but I
just wanted an idea of how similar colors in a random arrangement might look.
At this point, the thing to do should have been making a digital model with weaving software. Except I don't have weaving software installed on this laptop, so I had a play with it in Gimp. I turned the stripes vertically as the bottom layer, superimposed the leaf weave draft as a top layer, and did a little color replacement of the original draft.
My first thought was that the leaf pattern became somewhat lost. It might look better if I could zoom out, which weaving software would help with. So would sampling, and I'm thinking I should try both an 8/2 white weft and a 6/2
white weft and experiment with the beat to make sure I don't lose the leaf
pattern.
My other thought was that it might be best to stick with warp colors of
similar value, so there's no visual competition with the leaf pattern. I want variation in the leaf motif to be subtle and not compete with the pattern. If I do that, I have four colors closer in value.
My other observation is that replicating the stripes from the random stripe generator would be a tedious task. Especially since I'll likely need something like 370 ends! So I'll have to come up with another way to design a random stripe warp of that width.
So this is my starting point. We'll have to see what develops from here.
6 comments:
I can't remember if you warp FTB or BTF. But if you warp FTB, you can design your warp when threading the reed.
FWIW I can not abide warping FTB, but it does have that advantage.
I love the photos and color palette!
Good for you for sticking to similarly valued warp colors. I'd go with the thickest white in the weft to show off the leave. (In fact, the B side may come out more interesting in this particular piece.)
Just a though re. the warp color placement/distribution - have you thought of designing it on the warping board, i.e. deciding as you see them build up? I don't know how long your pegs are, and you may not be able to see all 370 at once, (on mine, 200 is the limit even if winding super fine threads,) but worth considering?
The only other consideration, (although I'd totally ignore them if it were my project,) is whether you want to change colors at the edge of every leaf if the motif is super important.
Goodness, all the possibilities!
PS - I assume you'll be using the same warp for all four towels??
BTF. Somehow I'll have to do it on the warping board. I have some ideas that I think will look random. At least random enough. We'll see!
Thank you Linda! It's a fun exercise.
Meg, thanks for the confirmation. My plan is to make three towels in each colorway, but each season will use different colors. So for the spring colorway I'll use a different warp, etc.
My warping pegs are pretty long (?). But I usually break it up into several bouts as I read somewhere that as the warp stacks on the pegs, it tends to get tighter and so shorter. I don't know if that's true. Sometimes I don't follow my own rule, though, it just depends on how it's going.
Good point about the threads at the edge of the leaves. The rows of leaves stagger, so the edge is the center of the row. I'll have to think about that.
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