Sunday, June 28, 2026

Leaf Motif: Spring Yarn Color Choices

 Now that the sampling is done for Winter Leaves, the weaving itself is fairly monotonous. I did indulge in an inexpensive MP3 player, to listen to downloaded books from my county library and librevox.org. The treadling pattern is fairly simple, so by combining the two activities, I have a very pleasant evening pastime. 

With weaving underway, it's time to start thinking about the colors of the next season - spring. Both spring and summer leaves are green. So I have to ponder how to make the two weavings—Spring Leaves and Summer Leaves—distinctive. I want people to look at them and get which is which, rather than wonder which is which? 

So I've been collecting greens. I've taken quite a few photographs, and posted them as color studies on my photography journal:

I plan to do another one on late summer greens as well. 

From these, I've observed that, in general, new leaves in spring are a fresher, lighter, brighter green. Early summer leaves are turning darker; still bright, but not as light in value and hue. There are exceptions to this, of course, but for my purposes, I need color ranges that will enable a viewer to easily distinguish which is spring and which is summer. 

For Spring Leaves, here are my color options


The darker green on the left is 6/2 cotton and would be my weft. The five lighter greens on the right are all 8/2s and would be for my random color order warp. My Winter Leaves warp has four warp colors; here I'm looking at five choices. My original thought was to choose four and tie them onto the winter warp, following the same color changes. Right now, I can't decide which four to choose. Maybe use all five? I can't make up my mind!

There's plenty of time to decide, however, as weaving Winter Leaves will likely take awhile. 

4 comments:

Valerie said...

I always think of yellows in spring colors. Do you have any lemon yellows to throw in the mix?

Leigh said...

Valerie, when I was collecting photos, I noticed that a lot of spring leaves are warm greens. I looked yarns in warm greens, but I really don't care for them. They are more like pea and puke greens than spring greens. I do have a golden yellow in 8/2. I'll have to do some wrappings to see how it looks.

Toirdhealbheach Beucail said...

I love these colours, Leigh. Looking forward to seeing the work.

Leigh said...

Thanks TB. Once I finish Winter Leaves, I'll definitely be ready for a change.