Twisp of Fate

Three weeks ago I went over to the west side of the mountains for a 2-day workshop through the Seattle Weavers’ Guild.  It was taught by Kris Abshire, a weaver, dyer and surface design artist who lived and worked in Alaska for most of her life, but now lives in western Washington.  This particular workshop is called “Serendipity in a Cup” and focuses on hand-painting warps and wefts for weaving.

Here are a few of the sample pieces she brought to show us.  She uses silk yarns for the most part, and Lanaset acid dyes.  All of these were woven on a single painted warp (not combined warps); some have surface design elements which she teaches in another workshop called “The Esoteric Cloth”.

We each had two silk warps and accompanying skeins of weft yarn to dye, for 2 scarves.  The yarn was a 12/2 spun silk from Sanjo Silk at the Silk Weaving Studio on Granville Island, Vancouver BC.  She also gave us the color palette formulas for her basic range of 50 colors that she uses in her own work.  There were samples of the colors on large rings, which helped later in choosing a set of 5-6 colors to start the first painted warp.

The first day was spent in discussion and then mixing colors to use for our first warp.  Then she showed us how to lay out the warp on plastic wrap and start painting.  It can be divided lengthwise into strips that are each painted differently.  By the time we actually got to work it was mid-afternoon and I couldn’t deal with the lengthwise strip idea, so I just “went for it” and painted a random pattern down the whole width of my warp.  I am not good at random usually, so this was a challenge!

Once painted, they were rolled up in the underlying plastic wrap, placed in a large ziploc bag, and steamed for 20-30 minutes.  There is no way to spread it out again once it is done, so I guess I won’t really know how this turned out until I put the warp on a loom and weave it!  We also painted the dye onto the skein of weft yarn, and steamed that.  My weft for this first warp is a dark navy blue.

Here are the first day warps hung to dry outside:

The second day, she had us borrow other people’s colors from the day before, mix things up, just go for color without using formulas and planning.  Yikes!  But we also had more time, so I was able to divide my warp into lengthwise strips and paint each of them with the same colors, but offset.  I have a thinner blue-black border with shifted color down the middle.  The weft is a reddish purple.

Again, I won’t know how it all turns out until I weave it into a scarf.  But even if I am not completely happy with this first effort, it was about learning the process.  It was lots of fun, even if a little intense, and I do want to try some of this on my own.