Umpteen Colored Towels

I have been planning my next multicolor warp since my last two worked out so well.  I wound a 9 yard towel warp for the Baby Wolf loom and spiced up the stripe sequence a bit.  Each warp stripe was two different colors in a similar value and I used 14 different colors.  The warp was gorgeous and the thought occurred to me that maybe I should quit while I was ahead - photograph it and move on.  But, I wound it on the back beam slowly with a few pesky threads that had to be combed into submission.  My first tie up was the turned taquete draft seen in a previous post.  I picked three to five different colors for the weft.  Some of them had been used in the warp -- some not.  I tried to keep to a medium value.  Dee passed on this tip to me and she learned it from Michelle Whipplinger.  "You can get by with many colors in the warp if you use a medium value weft - of any color".  Seems unlikely, but I was determined to see if I could stretch the limits of this color thing. 

I started out easy with lots of colors that were similar to the warp colors.  Then, I progressed into darker value colors of green and teal.  I brought out some really brash turqoise green and used it.  All those tag ends of cones became depleted and my best color turned out to be a pewter gray/green.  Pretty uninspiring on the cone, but it really made the reds and pinks in the warp pop.

I was having fun with the taquete weave structure, but since the threading was two blocks on an eight shaft loom, I pulled out a couple more tie ups to try. 

The first tie up gives a lovely array of color and weave effects with the two toned warp.  The second tie up has plain weave, a spot weave and two other four shaft structures.  Lots of bang for the buck.

Not every color did work on this warp.  Yellows were yucky, but perhaps a gold would have been OK.  Lighter colored weft yarns weren't all that attractive either. I didn't use too many oranges, but the ones I tried worked pretty well.  There were lots more possibilities, but I ran out of warp at nine towels.