Loom Doodling With The Pine Trees

Before I removed the warp from my Pine Tree Table Runner, I wanted to weave a few mug rug size samples of an idea I've had on my mind.

Do you remember my first warp painted project? I took a break from my summer & winter explorations for that, and the entire time I was weaving I was wondering about combining the two. These little samples did that.

The fun part was making up the treadling as I went along. In fact, I wish I had put on a little longer sample warp. That warp BTW....

....wasn't actually painted. It was dip-dyed last summer when I was first working with Procion MX dyes. They were part of my experiments with PMX exhaust, and they suited these samples. I used a solid turquoise tabby weft for the first three, and then switched to the dip-dyed yarn for a tabby weft for the last one (bottom left).

I learned several things from these.

Firstly I was reminded how different S&W can look with a heavier, softer pattern weft. I have tended to use pattern wefts just a little heavier than the tabby. This one was a soft, 3/2 cotton which covered the warp (8/2 cotton at 16 epi.). This brought definition to the pine trees. Good to remember for weaving picture patterns like this.

Secondly, I learned that as much fun as it was to weave those pine trees, shapes are not what I enjoy about S&W. These can be accomplished in other ways; in fact I've moved double weave closer to the top of my "to-do" list.

What I have loved about S&W is what a weaver can do with color. Remember these (click here) dishtowels? They held hours of fascination for me. Not because they are geometric shapes (modern is not my style of art), but because of the blending of the colors.

So. I set out to explore one thing and learned something else. I love it when things like that happen and now I'm all the more ready to get started on my next project. What will it be? Stay tuned ..........

© 12 Feb. 2009 at http://leighsfiberjournal.blogspot.com

Related Posts:

Back to the Pine Trees
Summer & Winter Pine Tree Table Runner

Ikat/Painted Warp Bookmarks Done

By Leigh

And here they are....

A sampling of them anyway. I was able to get ten, 8.5 inch bookmarks (plus fringe) from a three yard warp with only 18 inches of loom waste. How did I manage that? By weaving the warp down to this.......

Actually it never would have occurred to me to try this, except for this photo of Peg's, from this post.

It was slow going to get a clean shed, but I just couldn't stop weaving. My painted warp colors were more defined at the ends of the warp, and more blended in the middle. I just didn't want to lose the color in that section of warp!

The project details for these are in this post. The only thing I can add is to say that there was very, very little draw-in and take-up in this project. I lost one to two eights of an inch in length, but that's it.

Even though these are woven with 20/2s cotton, it is interesting how heavy the fabric is as a warp-faced plain weave. Quite suitable for bookmarks. And other things, though I'm still trying to figure out what.

I need to get different project on the loom, but I plan to do more warp painting and ikat dyeing. These are definitely in my near weaving future.

Posted 2 Dec. 2008 at http://leighsfiberjournal.blogspot.com

Related Posts:
Experiments In Warp Painting - how I painted the warp
Learning Ikat Technique - how the ikat stripes were made
Weaving At Last - project details for these bookmarks

Experiments in Warp Painting

Warp painting was the next step in the Easy Ikat and Warp Painting Workshop, and this is what I was busy with over the weekend. Other participants had already reported surprise at some of the results they had gotten. So I shouldn't have been surprised that I was surprised with my results as well.

The procedure was basically the same as I used for painting roving (see this post for more on that), except that I this time I was painting cotton yarn instead of wool roving, which meant that I had to use fiber reactive instead of acid dyes.

In the workshop notes, Kaz recommended Hands On Dyeing for amounts of the ingredients needed for fiber reactive dyeing, so I'm going to pass on that recommendation to you. The yarns were presoaked in a warm water, salt, washing soda solution, according to the weight of the yarns. The dyestocks were made up of a 1% solution of dye powder (I used Procion MX) dissolved in water.

I painted them on with those little sponge dabber thingies.

Excess dye was mopped up and the yarn folded carefully in the plastic wrap it was lying on.

These were rolled up and allowed to sit for 24 hours. No steaming required. I did find a warm place to let them batch though. The next day, I thoroughly washed and rinsed them.

The surprise? Well,...

...... one thing that surprised me was the yellow. I used Procion Yellow MX-3RA, a warm yellow, which looks more orange to me than yellow. I do like these, but not to go with these ......

It definitely has some zing, doesn't it? However I wish I'd used a cooler yellow, because this is not a green I like very well. Besides the color itself, I think that either my warp bouts were still too wet when I started painting, or I got too much dye on them. For example, there are some way too long sections of green in the second set of warps. I'd anticipated shorter sections of color, suitable for a short project like a bookmark.

This has been interesting but it leaves me with a dilemma. There is no way I'm going to use those two colorways together. So I have to decide which one to use. Then I'll try to match that with a second round of warp painting. Actually this has been a lot of fun, so I may just keep on painting until I finish off the cone!

© 17 Nov. 2008 at http://leighsfiberjournal.blogspot.com

Related Posts:

Learning Ikat Technique
A Day For Painting Roving - using acid dyes on wool
Weaving At Last - project details
Ikat/Painted Warp Bookmarks Done - how it turned out