Colour & Weave in Sheffield

This morning I did battle with the snow to get from South Derbyshire to south of Sheffield to tutor a Colour and Weave Workshop for the Hallamshire Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers.

I'm so glad I did because they worked really hard and produced some really interesting plain weave (tabby) designs.  Take a look below to see the results:

Ten people signed up for the workshop and despite the weather only one person had to drop out.

The looms ranged from rigid heddle looms to a 16 shaft loom.

Looms were pre-warped with a range of simple colour and weave patterns with a contrasting colour to differentiate between each pattern.

On the loom the weave looks quite open, but after wet finishing this lovely subtle blue and green weave will look stunning.

Just before lunch I got the group to substitute some of their warp ends to add interest to the work.

Here black was used to dramatic effect.

Gold and red were used very effectively here, in a rug yarn, which shows the patterns beautifully.

This is the same warp as the one above, but with some of the gold warps substituted with a moss green.  The green really made a difference to the pattern on the bottom left.

After lunch the colour effects were explored on paper, which is a great way to test ideas when you've not got your loom with you!

The purple and red warp was very dramatic with the turquoise blue divider warps.

Some of the red warps were substituted with the blue and used in the weft in one of the patterns here.

This is a sample of a new weavers efforts.  She really worked hard and her selvages were perfect!

After repeating the same colour combinations of the warp in the weft, the group went on to try out some combinations of their own.

Sadly this image doesn't do this weavers efforts justice.  The blue grey and white warps were really lifted by the addition of a lovely lime green, which looks rather yellow in the image.

Although, not clear, a plum warp substituted some of the dark blue warps to great effect.

This dark blue and light blue colour and weave sample was also lifted by the addition of purple.

By the end of the day each weaver had a good range of colour and weave sample patterns that they could use as reference for further colour and weave projects.