Twelve Yard Sampler

Last November (was it really that long ago) I had the realization that I was relying on old skills too much in my weaving endeavors.  Time to introduce color to my work, try something entirely different and go out on a limb.  I had woven some turned taquete towels (see a previous post) that were full of color and thought that I would do something similar except that I would use fine wools.  The fine wool idea came from the fact that I have lots of partial cones picked up a weaver's sales over the years.  I thought that if I were to pick colors with similar values and alternate them in warp stripes, it would add to the complexity of the finished cloth.  In my haste to get this warp on the loom, I hadn't done much in the way of calculations about the specifics of weave structure and had merrily wound on several inch bouts of wool at 30 epi. thinking that I could always figure the pattern out later.  Woops!  My intended structure of turned taquete was going to use increments of four threads and 30 doesn't divide equally by four.  This could have been worked out easily on a plain colored warp, but with the stripes things needed to be exact.  My direction turned to five thread structures.  Easy, I would do five thread satins and five thread twills.  I continued to wind warp and got lost in the forest of colors, fogetting how many different kinds of wool yarns I had used.  Some were very fine and I was starting to get a bit uneasy about how this would weave.

This picture isn't quite large enough to show that each of the color stripes is actually two colors of wool.  The yellow and bright green stripes stand out too much, but afterall, this is a sampler.

Next post I'll share some of the trials and tribulations of weaving off 12 yards of experimental warp.