Colors of My Valley #4 Indigo & Woad
Making decisions on how to place blues and greens in a satin and plain weave scarf. Limited colors on each presents a planning challenge on how to distribute the colors. The greenish grey on the left is green acorns. It is the neutral that I will use as weft. Silk is Habu A-4. All colors natural dyed with woad, japanese indigo, and acorns
I decided to keep it plain and simple and just use the stripe satin with the plain weave. The stripes are too strong for the curves and don't add anything. I think curves should be in a solid color warp with another color weft. Surprisingly enough in the sample you can see that the acorn color I planned to use as weft wasn't effective so I decided to add to the indigo theme and use my japanese indigo weft. It looks much better. Final piece is on the loom and I am winding another warp to tie onto before I cut and photograph the indigo/woad scarf.
Acorns, Lichens and Japanese Indigo
A-4 silk from Habu, more detail on dyes later, photo upload test for now with minimum data for now
Japanese Indigo - 1st try!
This was my first year to try growing Japanese Indigo, it loves the Texas heat and I love the color! The blue is the 1st pull of color and the yellow is what you get when you simmer the leaves a 2nd time around with wool! Here is a link to my blog with more info.
woven shibori sample
This is the end of my scarf warp. I dyed the scarf and sample with procion rust then pulled up the ties. For the sample I discharged half and then overdyed in an indigo vat. The two ends are quite different. I can see possibilities for interesting effects by discharging and overdyeing portions. I have already discharged the entire scarf and am in the process of dyeing that in the indigo vat.
Colors of Spring - Scarves
Scarves woven to enhance 2 skeins of wool/soy silk blend from Rivers Edge Weaving Studio (Carol Larsen) purchased out of boredom at last years' Wisconsin Spin In. The handspun singles are mixed with wool in the warp in harmonizing shades - hand dyed by me with indigo, cochenille and lac insects.
"Pattern" is based on a straight draw(4 shaft) and creative treadling on all 8 treadles - including tabby, 2/2 twill and 3/1 twill in a sequence that brings up the warp to enhance the effect of the space dyed roving.
Indigo shawl
1. Shawl: felded after weaving and indigo-dyed again
2. Shawl: only felted after weaving
In both there are indigo dyed silkhankys
Indigo blanket
the blanket consist of 3 stripes approx. 75 centimeters
after weaving, they are washed in the machine and than in the dryer, they are felted
Ikat scarf
My friend Kathy and I originally dyed this yarn with goldenrod flowers, but it was a bit "dull." When another friend was having a bunch of us over to share an indigo pot a couple months ago, I decided to overdye this. I dipped about 2/3 of the yarn "as is." The other third I wrapped for Ikat. I dipped it once with all the wraps in place. Then I removed about half of them and dipped it again so I have some sections that stayed yellow, some that are a light green (were wrapped for the first dip and unwrapped for the second) and the majority of it dark green.
I warped the two yarns together and threaded them every other heddle. For weft, I switched back and forth randomly between the solid yarn and the Ikat.
Regular fringe, cut at a diagonal.
