I spent 5+ hours in my basement today. With its concrete floor and unfinished nature, my basement is a very functional space, especially for dyeing. But comfortable, bright, or cheery it is not. Rather dungeon-like, actually.
2 yellows and an orange
Warp painting is a many-day process for me. On Monday spent several hours planning warps for 3 runs of 3 scarves each, all in 8/2 Tencel. I had to decide on a weave structure for each, and if I would make fringed scarves, long or short cowls, or some combination of the three for each warp. Then I had to determine sett (threads per inch in the warp) and decide if I would wind all the threads in one bout (group of warp threads; winding more than one bout allows for more variety in the painting of the colors, but also takes more time to both make the bouts and paint them).
2 blues and a purple
Next is to actually wind those warps. For me that was 7 bouts for the 3 warps (2 bouts for 2 warps, 3 bouts for the other). Each warp was a different length based on what I plan to weave, and each had a different number of threads. So I had to use a system to know which bout was which. I used different sizes, fibers, and textures of threads for my ties so I could differentiate them at every step of the process.
I wound 2 warps Monday night, the other 5 this morning. Then I had to scour and presoak the warps while I mixed dyes and prepared the work surface. (I forgot to take photos of some of the warps after painting.)
After carefully laying out each prepared warp I had to paint on the dyes, being sure to get all of the threads without wasting lots of dye by using too much. Then wrap them up in saran wrap like snakes, and steam each of the 7 bouts individually for 1/2 hour while I was painting the next warp.
light and dark terracotta
The 7 bouts are now sitting in my oven, with the oven light on for a bit of warmth. They’ll sit there overnight. Tomorrow morning, after my Guild meeting, I’ll carefully unwrap each bout and set it to soak in a basin of water until Thursday morning. This helps minimize both water usage and time in rinsing. On Thursday morning I’ll rinse each bout separately until the rinse water is clear.
Then I’ll hang up the bouts to dry. Given our cold spring, they’ll be hanging in my house – maybe in the basement, and will likely take more than 24 hours to dry. During that time I’ll need to fondle each bout some to make sure it’s spread apart enough so that it dries completely, and give it a good snap at several places along its length to separate and straighten the threads.
light and dark blue
So perhaps sometime this weekend I can actually put the first warp on my loom – a whole week from the beginning of this process. Meanwhile I’ll wet finish those ‘springtime’ scarves from the last post, and put another warp on the loom to weave with commercially-dyed yarn. Maybe it’ll be silk. Maybe not.
