Painted Warps

This week I was able to get some warps off of looms! Being able to check something off of the 'list' is such a good thing!!  The mug rug warp is off. I still have to cut them apart. DH wants one for his mug at the table where he works on his computer so he gets the first one. There's one that has a treadling error in it, might give that to my Mom when I go up there later this year. The rest will go to the pile that will end up at Southeastern Fiber Forum at Arrowmont in April.

 Haven't wash the scarves yet from the painted warp I did at LouAnn's. I have a few skipped threads to fix first. The ones on the left were woven with the royal blue and the right with the turquoise. There's not alot of difference and I like the blue better than the turquoise. I thought it would be the opposite but the blue has a bit of a richer tone to is. That surprised me. I keep learning about how colors interact each time I put on a warp.

 Inbetween I did get a production warp done. This is the end of it. I almost forgot to take a picture. Of course, you can see where a thread broke while I was weaving and my pin bringing in a new thread. Before I wash my pieces, I always repair everything. The washing helps to hide any repairs and no one ever sees them. I have several repairs to do on this warp. The 8/2 rust broke a few times while I was weaving. There's a variegated yarn in here that I used to pull other colors together to make the progressions.

 When we had our dye day at the center recently I brought along two skeins of bamboo to paint for weft to go with the other 2 warps I painted at LouAnn's. This is the first one. There's enough warp here to make 3 not too long scarves which I think will be nice for my nieces to choose from for their gift this year. The combination of a painted warp and variegated weft is doing interesting things as I weave. This is going to be a very fun project because each scarf will look different. We painted the warps that first time and it was a wonderful time of just throwing the paint on without thinking about taking notes or anything. I picked 2 of the colors to try to bring it all together with the weft. We'll see how it goes. I hope to get a bunch of this woven this week yet.

 After our dye day at the center we had some dye mixed for painting warps left over. I brought it all home. That, along with my own dye, I used to paint a 3 section warp and then 3 skeins for weft. This is the first combination. We'll see how the rest work. I am planning 3 vests with this warp. I'm not sure yet how I will finish them but I'd better figure it out quickly because one of these will be at the Emporium for the Foothills Craft Guild exhibit first weekend in February.

I've gone to fiber conferences for a long time, especially Midwest Weavers Conference. I missed a lot of years in the late 80s and 90s but I'm back going again now. Early on in the early to mid 80s we would buy these wonderful skeins of painted cotton or silk and I know there were businesses that did alot of dyeing and then selling them at the conferences. One of the skeins that I painted last Monday looks an awful lot like one of the skeins I bought back in the day!! Back then I was too scared to try to dye some on my own. I always meant to try but didn't take the plunge. Being with a group of weavers like our Tuesday Weavers gives all of us that little push to try the new things we've wanted to try and the support we need when we have questions. I don't have all the answers but between all of us, we figure it out!
I'm not sure what we'll get into next. Right now I'm wanting to play more with the dye and see how I can incorporate it into more of my production pieces. We hope to dye more on Tuesdays. We have a ton of white loopers that are just crying for dye! The rugs we make will be wonderful and different. It's fun to see the rugs, scarves and vests when they're done but the process is the greatest!!
Carol