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:

• spring greens
• early summer greens

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. 

Leaf Motif: Spring Yarn Color Choices

© 2026 by Leigh at Leigh's Fiber Journal

Leaf Motif Random Color Warp is on the Loom!

 Good grief, I never thought getting a warp on the loom would be noteworthy on a project, but I've had so much trouble with this warp that I'm celebrating that it's finally accomplished!

What took so long? Besides not having unlimited amounts of time for weaving anymore, I made so many threading mistakes! Threaded the heddles, checked the threading and found mistakes, corrected the mistakes, checked again, and then found new mistakes! What's annoying is that it's not a complicated threading pattern: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 7 - 6 - 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - repeat. I can't believe I had so many errors. And I wasn't even listening to a book while I did it. 

And then there were the tangles. What a mess. Changing the color for every warp end to create a random color warp was a disaster. I picked up a different color yarn for each new end which meant there was a lot of crossing over on the first and last pegs on my warping board. I think this was the major reason for the tangles. I've never had so many tangles! In fact, I'm a little surprised that I didn't give up and throw the whole thing away. Perhaps it was the unwelcome idea of having to start the warp again from scratch that was the deterrent. My random color idea didn't work the first time, so likely it wouldn't work a second time either. I just started thinking of it as a puzzle to solve.

Ironically, the very project I hoped would be a relaxing distraction from the several stressors in my life, became a stressor itself. Anyway, it's on the loom! Yay!

Next is tying up the treadles. I'm trying a new system here, and if it works as well as promised, I'll be ready to actually start weaving soon!

Leaf Motif Random Color Warp is on the Loom! 

© 2026 by Leigh at Leigh's Fiber Journal

Leaf Motif Dishtowels: Random Color Warp Notes Part 3

The warp is sleyed, the reed is in place, and I'm on to threading the heddles.

The thread ends are in random color order in the reed, and I have two ends per dent, so I can choose one or the other for the heddle order. I'm just trying not to put the same color in adjacent heddles. 

Not that it would be disastrous, but to keep anything that looks like a stripe from standing out visually. I just have to keep an eye on the next reed pair of colors as I make my choices. 

To warp front-to-back, I'm able to lower the seat on the bench and put it inside the loom.

That makes it easy to reach everything. Fortunately, it's an easy threading pattern.

Leaf Motif Dishtowels: Random Color Warp Notes Part 3 

© 2026  by Leigh at Leigh's Fiber Journal

Leaf Motif Dishtowels: Random Color Warp Notes Part 2

 Sleying the reed has begun.

I want 20 ends per inch and my closest reed in 10 dents per inch. So I'm sleying two ends per dent. 

It's been fairly quick. I wound the yarn onto the warping board in a random color order, so now it's just a matter of making sure I don't have two of the same color in the same dent. 

Leaf Motif Dishtowels: Random Color Warp Notes Part 2 

© 2026  by Leigh at Leigh's Fiber Journal

Leaf Motif Dishtowels: Random Color Warp Notes Part 1

At last my first leaf motif warp measured and I have thoughts.

Measuring the warp presented some challenges.

Designing a random warp. Previously, I mentioned the challenges of designing a random stripe warp, here.

Winding a random warp. Thoughts and ideas here.  

Threading Order and the cross. Weavers rely on the cross to maintain the threading order. This is true of both the threading cross and when warping back-to-front, the raddle cross. Orderly threads means no tangles! Stripes with groups of threads in one color are typical, but my random warp meant each end was a different color. I chose to not cut each thread and tie on a new one when I changed the color.  Instead, I just set that color aside and continued with the next color. That meant that my threads crossed one another at the turn of the cross. 

It didn't take long to realize that because the various colors passed over the other colors each time I used them, warping back-to-front wouldn't work. So I'm opting for front-to-back, where I can choose which thread goes next. I may have to shake out a few tangles when I wind the warp onto the back beam, but it will prevent tangles at the raddle cross due to crossover of the threads.

That probably doesn't make any sense! So let's just say I'm having to adjust my technique to address the circumstances. 

Conclusion. Even though I get better warp tension on my Glimakra by warping back to front, if I do another random warp from scratch in the future, I'll warp it front to back. I don't have it all figured out, but it wasn't a waste of time because I learned a lot.  

For my four seasons color motif, the next warp (spring) will be tied on, which will make things much easier.

Next up is sleying the reed (and seeing how well I do with my random color for that).

Leaf Motif Dishtowels: Random Color Warp Notes Part 1 

© 2026  by Leigh at Leigh's Fiber Journal

Tips for Winding a Multicolor Warp

 

Random winter color theme warp

While struggling to figure this out on my own, it occurred to me to search 'how do I wind a random color warp?' Some of the advice is for multicolor warps rather than specifically random color warps, but the ideas sort of belong together, so I've made notes of the suggestions I learned.

• Some people cut each color when it's wound and tie on the next one to the cut end. Since I'm changing colors for every warp end, that did not appeal to me. At. All. 
• Madelyn van der Hoogt, on the other hand, doesn't cut. In her article, Ask Madelyn: Winding Multicolored Warps she states, "I never cut and tie as I change colors. Just wind the ending thread 4 or 5 times around the peg where it ends to secure it (either the start peg or the end peg). When you need to use that color again, simply pick it up and continue, leaving the windings on the peg." That's close what I've been doing, except at the raddle end, where I need everything to be the same length for the end stick.
• From Glimakra USA: "If you want to wind warps with random colors or textures, you can warp back to front by placing the warp bouts on a table and mixing the colors and threads in the raddle or pre-sley a reed to use as a raddle."
• Ideas suited for warping front to back:
• Wind each color separately in its own bout and either sley each color separately, or select colors while threading the reed. I'm thinking this would work best for a planned color order.
• Wind all colors together as a group, then select colors while threading the reed. I'm thinking this one would work for my next seasonal color warp because I plan to tie it on. 
• Then there was this idea from Rock Lake Weaving's video, Changing colours while measuring a warp. The picture below is a screenshot from the video.

She threads the yarn ends through a reed to keep them from tangling. See the video for details.

I thought this a very clever idea and tried it when I started bout #2. But because I'm not cutting each color when it's wound and tying on a new one, I still had tangling. This time it was all above the reed, so that I couldn't rearrange the cones to sort it out. I'll abandon it when I get to bout #3, unless it becomes too tangled to proceed as is. 

So that's the notes from my research so far. If you have suggestions for preparing a multicolor warp (especially a random one) I'd love to hear them. 

Tips for Winding a Multicolor Warp

© 2026 by Leigh at Leigh's Fiber Journal

Begun! Leaf Motif Random Warp: Winter Colors

 I've started measuring my warp! The last of the construction details are done in my weaving room, so I can finally start on this project. I figured out a way to hang my warping board on my Glimakra and have made a start on my random winter color warp. This post is to document my start date, observations, and notes for next time. 

first 30 warp ends in 8/2 cotton

I'm following the checklist I created last month with a random color generator. 

My checklist. Working with groups of five helps
 me keep count of raddle groups and threading cross.

Things that help:

• Deciding beforehand that it would be a slow process. 
• In other words, be patient.
• Accept that the yarns will tangle and take the time to sort them out frequently.
• Know that I'll figure it out as I go along. 
• Label my colors with the color names on my check-off list
• Good lighting. The colors are close in value, so the browns especially are harder to tell apart.
• Check off each color on my checklist as I go along. 
• Don't worry if I think I'm making a mistake. It's random color order anyway, so, so what?

scraps of paper with the color names have been helpful

I don't have as much time for weaving as I used to, but making progress makes me feel good. 

Begun! Leaf Motif Random Warp: Winter Colors

© 2026 by Leigh at Leigh's Fiber Journal

Decision About the Random Stripes

I laid out my thought process in my last post, which was helpful as it gave me a chance to organize my thoughts and look at my options for comparison. I decided to go with using a random stripe generator and warping back to front. 

The generator gave me both a visual chart of what the stripes will look like, plus a list of the color order by color names. Since my yarns don't have color labels, I'm going to have to assign them names in order to know which ones to wind as I follow the list.

My actual yarns I would call brown, beige, gray, and khaki. The closest picks I got from the generator were called Camel, Mocha, Mushroom, and Meadow. Gotta love those descriptive color names. They look good on labels but are pretty meaningless when trying to find substitutes or describe something to someone else. 

As an aside, I just finished reading a book entitled Where We Meet the World: The Story of the Senses by Ashley Ward. It will likely come as no surprise that scientific researchers have determined that people don't all perceive color the same way. We don't see the same color when we look at them. We may identify something as green, but how that green appears to us may be different than the person standing next to us. Makes me wonder if my fussiness about color only matters to me. 

Once I chose the colors, stripe width, and number of stripes, I could keep hitting the "generate stripes" button to get different groups of 50 stripes each. 

The visual they gave me looks like this

First 50 random stripes

The colors aren't a good match to my yarns, but it gives an idea of the randomness. For winding the warp I think I'll do best to follow the list and check them off as I go. I'm including the list here in it's entirety, so I don't lose it. 

 Camel, Mocha, Camel, Meadow, Mushroom, Meadow, Mushroom, Camel, Mushroom, Meadow, Mushroom, Camel, Mushroom, Mocha, Camel, Mushroom, Camel, Mushroom, Camel, Meadow, Mocha, Mushroom, Mocha, Camel, Mocha, Meadow, Camel, Meadow, Mushroom, Camel, Meadow, Camel, Mocha, Mushroom, Mocha, Meadow, Mocha, Meadow, Camel, Mocha, Mushroom, Camel, Mocha, Camel, Mocha, Mushroom, Camel, Meadow, Mushroom, Meadow

Mocha, Meadow, Mushroom, Meadow, Mocha, Camel, Mushroom, Camel, Mushroom, Camel, Meadow, Mocha, Mushroom, Camel, Mushroom, Camel, Meadow, Mocha, Camel, Mocha, Mushroom, Mocha, Meadow, Camel, Mocha, Camel, Meadow, Mushroom, Mocha, Camel, Meadow, Mushroom, Camel, Mushroom, Camel, Mushroom, Camel, Mocha, Meadow, Mushroom, Camel, Meadow, Mocha, Meadow, Mocha, Mushroom, Meadow, Mocha, Meadow, Mushroom

Mushroom, Meadow, Mushroom, Mocha, Meadow, Mocha, Meadow, Mocha, Camel, Mushroom, Mocha, Mushroom, Mocha, Camel, Mushroom, Meadow, Mocha, Mushroom, Mocha, Meadow, Mushroom, Meadow, Camel, Mocha, Meadow, Mushroom, Camel, Meadow, Mocha, Camel, Mushroom, Mocha, Mushroom, Meadow, Mushroom, Mocha, Mushroom, Camel, Meadow, Mocha, Camel, Mushroom, Camel, Mushroom, Camel, Mushroom, Meadow, Mocha, Camel, Mushroom

Mocha, Mushroom, Camel, Mushroom, Camel, Mushroom, Meadow, Camel, Mocha, Camel, Mushroom, Mocha, Camel, Mushroom, Meadow, Mushroom, Mocha, Meadow, Mushroom, Mocha, Meadow, Camel, Meadow, Camel, Mushroom, Mocha, Camel, Meadow, Camel, Mocha, Mushroom, Mocha, Camel, Mushroom, Camel, Mocha, Camel, Mocha, Meadow, Camel, Mushroom, Mocha, Meadow, Camel, Meadow, Camel, Mushroom, Camel, Mocha, Camel

Mocha, Mushroom, Mocha, Meadow, Mocha, Mushroom, Mocha, Camel, Mocha, Meadow, Mocha, Meadow, Mocha, Camel, Mushroom, Camel, Mocha, Mushroom, Camel, Mushroom, Camel, Meadow, Mocha, Meadow, Camel, Mushroom, Camel, Mocha, Camel, Mushroom, Camel, Mushroom, Meadow, Mocha, Mushroom, Meadow, Mocha, Camel, Meadow, Mocha, Mushroom, Mocha, Meadow, Mushroom, Camel, Mocha, Meadow, Mocha, Meadow, Mushroom

Mushroom, Camel, Mushroom, Mocha, Meadow, Camel, Mocha, Meadow, Mushroom, Meadow, Camel, Mocha, Mushroom, Camel, Mocha, Meadow, Mocha, Camel, Mushroom, Camel, Mocha, Mushroom, Camel, Meadow, Mushroom, Meadow, Camel, Meadow, Mocha, Mushroom, Meadow, Mushroom, Meadow, Mocha, Mushroom, Meadow, Mocha, Meadow, Mushroom, Meadow, Camel, Mushroom, Mocha, Camel, Mocha, Mushroom, Meadow, Camel, Mocha, Camel

Decision About the Random Stripes

© 2026 by Leigh at Leigh's Fiber Journal