My daughter-in-law spins gorgeous yarn. Which makes me very happy.
Because, sometimes a skein or two finds its way into my studio.
Recently, she spun Merino and silk and dyed it turquoise and purple, separated by short sneezes of sunshine yellow.
I love it, and have been puzzling over how to use it in one of my new tapestries in a way that keeps the integrity of the colorway, while working across the entire width of the tapestry. Weaving narrow bands of it in vertical columns would not be a problem with maintaining the colors as units… but… horizontally- ah, well… that’s another cup of soup entirely.
I didn’t want to have the colors end up in little splats of one color arguing with another.
That meant working in short segments, weaving small blocks of each color.
I could have woven little squares of each color, with little slits that would need to be stitched or interlocked. Myech…
I sat down with my trusty little pencil and thought about this conundrum….
and came up with this:
If I started at the left hand edge, and wove a little triangle with one length of turquoise, then, I could use the little bursts of yellow to tell me when to nip down, and start a slanting wedge of purple.
This completely worked for me! I wouldn’t have any joins to deal with, and I could work each little section of color in order, so the colorway of the yarn stays intact.
It’s a happy solution to an interesting problem!
Tapestry weaving is full of nifty little voyages of discovery 🙂
My first little purple patch was not so perfect, but by the time I had woven across to the right hand side I was pleased with it.
Here’s the video:
Working with handpainted handspun yarn in tapestry
My daughter in law will be uploading some of her new yarns and batts and braids to her website soon. LINK