Back Blogging at Last!!

Oh dear, I have had so many "life" things to deal with, not least a leak from our immersion heater, that I've not had time to do much work. I am supposed to be putting a couple of portfolio's together, one for my apparel textiles and one for interior textiles.

Finally sat down today to work on the Donnington Le Heath picture I posted way back in January!
I have got a number of pictures and sketches in my sketch book and have done a few wrappings, but decided to run the picture through Colour Palette Generator and got some nice colours. The beauty of the CPG is how it narrows down the colours. When looking at colour on your own, there is a tendency to choose too many colours which can makes a weave look too busy.

Color Palette Generator

Enter the URL of an image to get a color palette that matches the image. This is useful for coming up with a website color palette that matches a key image a client wants to work with.

URL of image:

dull #445533 #998877 #ffffff #bbaa99 #887766

vibrant #556611 #bb9966 #ffffff #eecc99 #aa9944

These colours are lovely, I particularly like the coral colour in the vibrant palette.

I think it would be a good idea to isolate a section of the building:

this is the section and it's interesting to see what colours the CPG has generated!

dull #998877 #aaaa99 #eeddcc #ddbbaa #777766

vibrant #bbaa66 #ccccaa #ffffdd #ffddaa #888866

I love the dull palate again, I think it's the greys and pinks, but I also love the coral in the vibrant palette. I can't make my mind up which palette I prefer, so I will have to have a play with my yarns and do some wrappings, the actual yarn will give me a better feel.

So off to do some wrappings and have a think about what kind of weave to use!

See you later, have a lovely Christmas.

Rigid Heddle Loom Week-end

Back in October I tutored a week-end course for Skylark Holidays. The subject was an introduction to using a rigid heddle loom or Knitter Loom.

I had a great time teaching 3 lovely ladies who were really enthusiastic about learning to weave. They didn't want to learn on 4 shaft looms which they perceived to be less portable and more complicated. One had been told by members of her guild that "a rigid heddle loom wasn't a real loom". What sad narrow minded people they are! As I pointed out to her Thailand, Guatamala, Mexico, to name but a few countries, all have traditions of weaving on "back-strap" looms which are little more that rigid heddles with extra sticks and look what fabulous textiles come from them! All I can say is they are "loom" or "shaft" snobs".

Anyway, they had a thoroughly enjoyable time and produced two lovely pieces of weaving, each. Alas, I had planned to photograph them with their work, but we suddenly realised what time it was and they had to rush off to get home in a reasonable time. I have my work to show you, a scarf in Colinetter Prism and a table runner in Colinette Wigwam and Giotto.


For those of you who are new to weaving I thought I would show you how to mend weaving "skips", those annoying little mistakes which occur when one or two warp threads stick together and instead of going under one and over one you end up with a section where you go under one, over three or over one and under three as in the case on the left!



Thread a large eyed needle with your weft yarn and, starting about 8 or so warps threads away from the skips, follow the path of the weft thread with your needle, leaving a tail.







When you get to the skips, follow the correct path, over one and under one, weaving in the skipped warps. Continue past the now woven in skips following the path of the weft thread until you are 8 or so warps past where the skips were, again leave a tail.





When you have mended all the skips wash your piece of weaving and when it's dry cut the tails. Press your work and you won't know where the skips had been!

Natural dyeing in Mexico

Try this lovely slide show to see the beautiful natural dyes used in Mexico. It is truly inspiring and uplifting.

Caroline's help with Colour Palettes

Hi all,

here are the colours that were generated by the URL that Caroline recommended (see the comment after the last post). Sadly no lilac, but good never the less. It is really worth a look at and a play with! I particularly like the fact that it give you a choice as to "dull" or "vibrant". This should suit all preferences.

Color Palette Generator

Enter the URL of an image to get a color palette that matches the image. This is useful for coming up with a website color palette that matches a key image a client wants to work with.

URL of image: http://www.degraeve.com/color-palette/

dull #556655 #334433 #eeeeee #99bbbb #778877

vibrant #448855 #115522 #ffffff #99ccee #66aa77

It's funny that the closest to the lilac is in the "dull" palette!

I also tried the "colour hunter"
This gave similar colours, both are worth trying. Thanks Caroline.

Computer Design Again! 2

Well, I've managed to paste a layer of my chosen weave over the simulated painted warp! I am so excited about this and am going to try it with my New York Skyline exercise.

I had to play around with different tools to Linda's, as she used Photo Filter and I used Photoplus, but I got there in the end. It really has got endless possibilities which are really quite exciting.

Having looked at the design on this post, I think I need to lighten the weft, it's nice, but not quite the right colour.

Many thanks to Linda for showing me the idea.

Computer Design Again!

At the beginning of August Linda, from the Online Guild, posted an interesting post about transfering a weave to a stripe sequence design.

It has taken me quite a while to read through the details and work out how to do it, but I have managed the first part, which is creating the stripes using my Photoplus programme.




This is the picture I was given by a student in my class, which I have used as a starting point. We are using it in class to do some Creative Spinning.



Using the colour pick tool, I selected some of the colours and then using the paintbrush tool I painted the colours onto a new page.

What a surprise when I found the lilac colour in the reflected sky at the bottom of the picture!







I followed Linda's instructions on making a new page, 800 x 2400 pixels to represent the size of a scarf. In this I made rectangles which I filled with some of the chosen colours.

This is quite a pleasing task to do. What would be good is to use one of the programmes effects to put texture into the dark green areas and the pale blue areas. I will try that next.





I then repeated the exercise, but this time I made the stripes vertical. Again I would like to make the green and pale blue into texture by using one of the effects.

Finally I repeated this exercise and added a gradient fill.

All I have to do now is to add a layer to this with the weave on it. I have almost got there, but my weave pattern is to pale to be seen clearly enough.

However, I really like this gradient design and could see it in a lovely silk scarf, dip dyed or painted in sections to get the gradients.

I also want to try this exercise with the New York Skyline exercise. I have almost finished weaving the 10 metre length in wool. I have just to order more of the "Rusticana" colour, marled brown, and weave the last 2 metres!

Tapestry in Bulgaria

Here is the next instalment of my retreat in Bulgaria.

As I have said, the retreat is owned by Silvia, a tapestry weaver and acrylic artist from Pazardzhik in Bulgaria.


On the left is one of Silvia's lovely tapestries. She uses only natural yarns in her work which has a very distinctive folk art feel.



Having spent several lunchtimes and evenings spinning my tapestry weft and weaving the tapestry, I eventually finished it on the afternoon before we left. On the right you will see it finished, but still on the loom.


This close up shows the unwoven warp. I wanted to keep the yellow of the sky quite soft, as it was in the design. So rather than spin more weft, I felt the unwoven warp would look much better.

Unfortunately, I'm not so sure about the white in the free areas! I can't quite decide whether to unpick the white, which was finger crocheted with the colours, or leave it as it is!

I have now just got to sew in the end that will work to the front, the warp ends at the bottom and secure the warp ends at the top, so as to keep the free warp straight and even.

Back From Bulgaria

Well we've got back from a very relaxing 2 weeks in Bulgaria, one week on the Black Sea Coast at Balchik, one week at Silvia Haralambova's Artists Retreat near the Rhodope mountains and two days in Sofia.

I've just got to tell you how lovely Silvia's Artists Retreat is and yes I did manage to spin the weft for a small tapestry and weave it too!


The Cottage at the Retreat.


Here is the equipment and materials I took, in my suitcase, to work with . I took white, black, red, yellow and blue fleece, my carders, a 25g Michael Williams top whorl spindle and my Andean Plying tool. Oh and some yellow 3ply tapestry warp!









This is the design I work on before I left. It is taken from a lovely print by Guiliana Lazzerini. I planned to weave a much wider piece, but realised that it would be too ambitious for the week I had, so decided to make it narrower and so folded back the right hand side.














The Studio is across the garden from the cottage and barbaque area. It was lovely and cool inside the building, a real retreat from the hot sun.

It was equipped with a frame loom, artists easel, sink, workbench, chairs, radio/CD/ tape player and a whole load of tapes.







I spent the first few days, usually just before and after lunch when it was very hot or in the evenings when it was much cooller, blending the coloured fibres into the colours to match my design.

You can see a few of the yarns I blended and spun using Michael Williams 25g spindle. I am sure you must think I go on too much about the spindle, but it's a real work horse.





The frame loom was warped with the yellow 3ply tapestry warp and here is the work in progress. You can see that I had planned to make the work wider, but changed my mind when I realised I would be push for time to finish as I was spinning all my weft yarn.

I will post more about the retreat and the tapestry soon.

Another month gone by!

Oh, dear, another month has gone by and I've not managed to post, but things seem to be settling down now.

Woolfest went really well. The dyes seemed to be well received and sales were good, so lets hope that now they are beginning to be know that will increase. I was teaching a Learn to Weave course last week which also went very well. One student from Leicester went home on Friday afternoon and was so excited about her weaving she spent the evening finishing a set of place mats! We took the Japanese student sight seeing on Saturday up into the Peak District of Derbyshire, which included the tapestries of Haddon Hall, the Carnival at Bakewell and a visit to the market and antique shops of Ashbourne. On Sunday we took her to the local Lavender Patch and Staunton Harold Craft Centre, where she purchased some fabrics for her hand made bags, then on to Heathrow for her 12 hour flight home!

I now have three weeks to get my house and studio back into order before I go on holiday to Bulgaria. I can't wait to spend a week on the Black Sea Coast, really chilling out, before we drive to an Artists Retreat in the foot hills of the Rhodope Mountains. Silvia, our host, and her husband are artists, Silvia being a tapestry weaver and acrylic artist. Their lovely retreat consists of a small cottage set in a walled garden with an artists studio across the courtyard. The studio has a couple of tapestry frames, so I am trying to design a small tapestry that I should be able to complete in a week! Of course, I am sure I will be distracted by the lovely countryside which we are told is very suitable for walking.

Must go, lots to clean and that design to complete.

Not much to say really, but!

I've been quite busy really, so not had much time to post, I had intended to post at least once a week, but I'm afraid I haven't managed that!

I have been teaching on a Monday evening and had to prepare for that, as well as preparing for 5 days of teaching design to spinners for Skylark Holidays.

Add to that preparing to take my dyes to Woolfest at the end of the month and preparing for a weaving course for Skylark Holidays at the beginning of July, too! I wish you could add a couple of hours into your day when they were needed, sometimes 24 aren't enough!!

We had the proof of the book back from the publishers, last week. It really is going to be stunning. For those of you who don't know, my friend, Jane Deane, and I have written a book called "Creative Spinning" for Gaia, part of the Octopus Publishing group. We were asked way back at the end of last September if we could write an inspirational "coffee table" book and were given 6 weeks to produce 30 projects and 15,000 words. Well that was really a tall order so we asked for an extension and they gave us an extra 2 weeks! Needless to say we managed it and the book went off to the technical editor, who did a fantastic job because we were then told it had been sold to an American publisher and they wanted a "how to" section, but still only 15,000 words!

I have to say that the photographs are stunning and the illustrations are really clear. I just hope that it is well received, I can't tell you how stressful it is to have such a tight brief and deadline, my neck and shoulders are still suffering 7 months later!

By the way, the book is one of a series of 4; Creative Spinning, Creative Weaving, Creative Natural Dyeing and Creative Felting.

More soon.

Sunday Dyeing!

I've just had a lovely day dyeing with a friend. We had pre-mordanted 2 kilo's of Blue Faced Leicester Chunky yarn the previous week and spend the whole of Sunday dyeing it!

I set to work starting an indigo hydrosulphine vat ready to dip some pre-dyed hanks.

My friend, Lorraine, got the dyeing started by half filling a stainless steel meat tin with one of my Pure Tinctoria dyes and put in 5 100g pre-mordanted and wetted "centre-pull" balls. This gives a nice effect because it only dyes the part of the ball in the dye and that is shaded as the dye penetrates towards the centre of the ball. She simmered the balls in the dye for 40 to 45 minutes, then washed and rinsed them.

Lorraine dyed 2 kilo's of Blue Face Leicester Chunky yarn in this way. As each batch was wash, rinsed and re-hanked, I folded them in half and dipped the ends in the indigo vat.


Here are the Red Lac and indigo dipped hanks hanging from my Sumach tree.
This batch of yarn is dyed with Myrobalan and then dipped in the indigo vat.

A bit of a dark picture, but this is 1 kilo of Purple Lac which had its hank ends dipped in the indio vat!

We had a great day and managed to dye 2 Kilo's of yarn, dip 3 kilo's of yarn and mordant 400g of yarn, have lunch and a good natter!