Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Space Dyed Scarf


I love this scarf and it will stay on my neck most of the winter.  It's the first thing that I have woven AND dyed in the past 25 years and I am planning to dye more yarn for weaving this winter.  I took a class from Kathrin Weber at Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair in October, 2012 on space dyeing.  We dyed a couple of skeins of cotton and rayon and one warp.  One of the things I learned from the weaving is the importance of making the color changes every 6 inches or so, not every 12 inches.  To show the effects of the different colors, you need to have frequent color changes.  The other two skeins have longer distances between the color changes.  When weaving these, I think I will tie on the warp on in groups that allow the color to shift several inches, giving an ikat-like effect.  Here's one of Kathrin Weber's designs that utilize this technique.




This scarf was made with the warp I dyed during the class.  The drawback is that the warp was only 100 ends, 4 yards long.  I got one full sized scarf from the warp and a short scarf, only about 40 inches.  It might be long enough for my 6 year old grand-daughter to wear, or it could make a cool cover for my tablet.



Because I wanted it to be predominantly warp faced, I needed a pretty close set, 20 epi.  I only found that out after sleying the reed at 15 epi and finding that the colors on the warp were not as clear as I would like.  So took all the ends out of the reed and started over.  The only other issue with this warp is that at 100 ends, it would give me a scarf only 5 inches wide, so I added several stripes of blue chenille.  The chenille was also used as the weft, which resulted in some iridescence in the fabric.

Date Finished  December 2012
Loom  Schacht Baby Wolf
Weave Structure  Plain
Reed  10 epi
Warp Fiber  Rayon thick and thin
Count 
Color  White, then space dyed with Procion dyes - mostly blues and reds
Source Blazing Shuttles
Warp Fiber  Rayon chenille
Count  1450
Color  Blue
Mfr
Source Webs
Warp Width in Reed  6.5 inches
Ends  132
Length  4 yds
Weft Fiber  Rayon Chenille
Count  1450
Color  Blue
 Source  Webs
Beat Warp Faced
Size  6.5" by 66" plus fringe
 

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