Almost two years ago I went to Whidby Island to attend a workshop by Kathrin Weber of Blazing Shuttles. It was probably the most influential thing to happen to my weaving ever. I learned to let go at that workshop. I learned a lot of other things and met some FANTASTIC weavers, but I really learned to just let go and enjoy weaving and color. I’ve always been a pretty plain vanilla girl. Kathrin’s personality is as colorful as her dye work and you can’t help but have a great time. If you have the opportunity to attend one of her workshops, do it! You will learn how to use her hand dyed warps to get the most out of them. Along with that comes lots of great tricks/tips that you can put to traditional warps as well. The picture on the right is my workshop project. You can read more about it here. On the last day we did a dyeing workshop. So. Much. Fun. I’ve been dyeing wool fiber and yarn for years, but dyeing cellulose fiber warps is a whole different animal. I wouldn’t say it’s harder, just different. Enter today’s post….
In the last post I showed you the hand dyed warps that I was going to tie on to a towel warp I have on the Glimakra Standard. I’ve woven one of the warps already in Deep Teal and have started the 2nd in Black. Let me tell you that when I dyed these I thought they were a flop and I wasn’t happen with them. I overdyed them with blue and I’d say they’re not too shabby!
In other hand dyed news, I had a twill warp on a LeClerc Medico that I sold back in Aprilish. The warp had been on the loom since the previous April. Are you seeing why I decided to sell it and my Mighty Wolf. Neither were getting much action. I LOVE my countermarch and the cherry BW was my 50th birthday gift, so she’s not going anywhere. But I digress… the warp on the Medico…. I directly wound it from the Medico to the back beam of my Baby Wolf and that’s where it sat and waited all this time. A couple of months before that warp I’d done a hand dyed warp in Turned Taquete and Block Twill. There’s been a lot of talk on the Blazing Shuttle Facebook page about also adding Repp to that mix. I’ve done Block Twill and Turned Taquete on the same warp before and you can see that project here, but I’d never tried Repp on the same warp.
I threaded the warp on the BW in Blocked Twill using the stripes as a guide as to where to change my blocks. I will add that if I’d know this was what I was going to do, I would have added more layers of color so there would be more changes, but it is what it is and I’m just playing around and having some fun.
This is the Repp I wove yesterday. I realize the epi is not as close as it usually is in Repp, but again, I’m just having fun here and playing around. I actually like the fabric a lot. It’ll sew up into a great bag, storage container or bench pad. Next I retied the treadles to weave Turned Taquete which is one of my faves:
