I needed a quick project of at least two different warps to demonstrate warping and dressing a loom for a guild meeting. Shadow weave seemed the perfect structure. I experimented with a variety of weft colors to play against the purple and black warp, including choosing some other dark color to replace the back. The oddest combination I selected was the most successful! It was a variegated yarn from JOY in mauve, a dusty orange-gold, and soft green shade. It made this warp sparkle! In the final analysis, black was the best option for contrast.
I am twisting the fringe now (using a technique new-to-me posted on Weavo last week) and will provide the finished dimensions once I have washed it. I plan to wash with clear dishwashing liquid in the machine, delicate setting, warm water. Toss in the dryer, monitor until it is nearly dry, but not bone dry, and then give it a steam press to bring out the sheen.
The draft was from the Strickler 8 shaft book.
WOW - I love everything about this. It's stunning. The flowing curves look like rippling water at a lakes edge. The colors you settled on make this piece a knockout. It's awesome. Well done indeed!
That's great. And what an interesting way to use variegated yarn! I am looking for ideas for that myself at the moment :-)
Just delicious, Sally. I look forward to seeing the finished scarf (with a close-up picture of the yarns, yes?) -- and if you could upload the way it feels when you touch it, I'd love that, too! ;-)
I'm with Ellen -- I wouldn't have thought to try a beautiful variegated JOY yarn as weft, but the result is absolutely lovely.
Ruth
I thought I'd show you some of the alternatives, and then the final, so you can see how odd some of the color combos under consideration were! This was a bit of a surprise to me too. (Thank goodness I sampled to get to something interesting.)
Cones on the left are the two warps. My first thought for weft was this variegated. But not enough contrast, too dark.
Next I tried variations of all these, with a very dark purple replacing the black on some options. The lighter colors looked interesting—the mauve, adobe, and gold II especially. That was when my eye was caught by some skeins of JOY variegated that had some of those colors in them.
Here's the final combo. Who knew?(FYI, the soft bits of green didn't render that well in this photo, they looked a bit washed out.)
That's an amazing process -- especially as the "candidates" all look excellent to me in photos of them as yarn! I wouldn't have imagined that that variegated would do the trick... but it certainly does.
Fascinating, how colours change, depending on who they're with (and how they interlace).
Ruth
That is a beautiful project Sally!
Cheers,
Erica
Sally, first your piece is a knockout! The colors you've chosen for warp and variegated weft really show the pattern off, so I agree with all the other comments here! Thanks so much for the color process! I love the color process when I do my own work. I wonder if it works so well because all three primaries are Represented in one combination or another in all the colors you used, except black? ( some people debate this black issue) what do you think?
I agree with everyone else, it's great! Sharon
Cathie,
I had not considered that. I did have a vague idea of value - in the sense of cool vs warm. My first choice was more to the cool. I ended up with something on the warm side, but the green in the variegated (that did not photograph accurately) was actually more to the cool than warm.
