Archives

Lots of color going on

I finished the three silk shawls I’d woven with the two different hand painted warps. First up, here’s the group of three, before wet finishing, just so you can see the overall differences. Reminder – the warp is all 20/2 silk.

3 handwoven shawls made with paint 2 silk warps

I wove them in the bottom-up order of the photo. So first is a navy 60/2 silk, woven in tabby. Here’s a beauty shot from the front.

handwoven silk shawl, paint 2 warps, navy weft-front

And from the back, so you can get a better sense of its weightlessness.

handwoven silk shawl, paint 2 warps, navy weft, back

Then I used a sage green tramm silk. Tramm is a very loosely spun yarn, often used for embroidery, and is very fine. I used 3 strands at once to approximate a 60/2 silk grist.

handwoven silk shawl, paint 2, sage weft, front

If the navy was weightless, I can’t think of a good word for this one. SOOO soft and lovely.

handwoven silk shawl, paint 2, sage weft, back

Unfortunately, that very loveliness is a drawback. I sett this yarn at 24 ends per inch, which I have done with this yarn with much success in the past. And since tabby is usually sett more loosely than twill, if anything I was concerned that the fabric would be a bit stiffer than I wanted. Well. This tramm silk is so fine that the finished cloth is not as stable as it needs to be. Here’s an example of what happens with an errant push of a finger.

example of finger push in sage silk shawl

The threads shift. Easily. Far too easily. So I won’t be selling this shawl.

Last up, I used 20/2 silk in a twilight blue, using a turned twill tie up and treadling. I followed the same ‘pattern’ as the threading. So for example if my threading pattern was 40A, 24B, 8A, 12B…that’s how I treadled, too. While I like the ‘randomness,’ this piece is way too busy for me.

handwoven silk shawl, paint 2, twilight weft, twill

Usually as I am weaving my brain is working on what comes next. But this time I just didn’t know. I thought I needed a bit of a break from towels, but what would I weave? No answer came, so I let that just be for a few days. Since it takes time to twist all that fringe on those shawls, and a lot more than usual as I beaded the fringe on the 2 tabby-weave pieces, I had plenty of time to think-while-not-thinking.

And my brain told me I needed to do another paint 2 warps piece. It kept saying Sunrise/Sunset. So I went through my stash, picked some mercerized cotton (since I can’t use that for towels), and measured out warp lengths.

(Side note: this wasn’t without problems. I didn’t have enough of the oddly-sized 8/3 cotton I wanted to use so planned to mix it with some 5/2 as they were a similar grist. But as I was measuring out the 5/2 I said, ‘nope.’ The yarn smelled funky. Why did I continue measuring out the whole thing before I made this decision? Who knows, but I did, even though I’ve not been successful at getting rid of that smell in the past. But since the warp was measured and chained, I decided what the heck, nothing to lose. So I washed it with very hot water, Dawn dish soap and a bit of white vinegar, then draped it over my fence. For a few days. And a few rains. When I re-chained it and brought it in I can’t detect a smell. But I put it in a bag by itself. If there’s still no smell in a few days or weeks, I’ll use it. Oh yeah…as it turns out, good thing I couldn’t use it right away as it’s actually 3/2, not 5/2, so is quite a bit heavier than my 8/3. Sometimes life works out as it is supposed to.)

Although without any additional yarn the piece would be narrower than I’d planned, but I couldn’t find any other yarn in my stash that I wanted to use with it, so I went down to the basement and dyed the 2 warps I made. Here’s what I ended up with.

hand painted cotton yarn, sunrise-sunset

Kind of shouts at you, eh? While I was a bit apprehensive that it would all be too bright, I fell totally in love while I was beaming these warps. I hope the weaving turns out well.

beaming sunrise sunset warp

Unrelated, I picked my first pink brandywine tomato. Isn’t she a beauty?

pink brandywine tomato

I made my first-of-the-season tomato salad. SO YUMMY!!

tomato salad

7 comments to Lots of color going on

  • Judy T

    Those silk shawls look so very lovely in the photos, but even more gorgeous in person!
    Just love love love it!

  • Alma

    Colors, colors, colors! The citrus dyed yearn is outstanding! Silk shawls – how luxurious!

    Square tomatoes – made for all the square plastic storage boxes they make for us!

    Things look very good!

    • Peg Cherre

      You know, Alma, I had to go back and look at the photo, because the tomato hadn’t struck me as square, but it sure does look it in the picture.

  • Peg, you are so talented at dying yarns. Love the duo you came up with. Please send tomatoes to our house, our chickens ate all ours and the plant!

    • Peg Cherre

      Thanks so much for your compliments. I can’t wait to see how it all weaves up. 🙂 Chickens – you gotta love ’em!

  • Loving all your color this post – the shawls are stunning. I haven’t done any warp painting in a while, I may have to wind some warps and spend some time the next couple of months dyeing for cheerful winter weaving.

    • Peg Cherre

      Thanks, Cindie. I do like hand painting, but tend to go in spurts with doing it. And I have SO MUCH solid color, commercially dyed yarn that I need to use up…it’s seemingly endless. Must. Use. Stash!

Leave a Reply to Peg Cherre Cancel reply

You can use these HTML tags

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>