Playing with Gradient Colors

Dyeing yarn and painting warps provide for unique opportunities to design a woven project. Lately, I enjoy weaving with a 5/2 Tencel yarn. When the opportunity came up to dye yarn within our weaving guild, I was excited to get outdoors and create. Sara Nordling, our guild member and instructor, walked us through the detailed calculations.

Mini-skeins of teal and purple with 3 gradients

I knew I would need to mix the gradient dyed yarns with a yarn in my stash in order to weave a scarf. I selected a space-dyed warp by Kathrin Weber of analogous colors in teals/blues/purples. The beginning of the warp consisted of lighter blue values and would change to darker purples while weaving.
I have been studying Deflected Doubleweave for over a year now and wanted a simple design with large areas of plain weave and floats to show off the gradient colors. I alternated the space-dyed warp and gradient yarns as much as possible with a border of darker teals that decreased in value toward the center. The purple gradient dyed warps were also mirrored in the center of the design.

Beaming the warp

I selected two shades of lavender weft so as not to overpower the subtle changes in colors.

Continued weaving showing the darker portion of the space-dyed warp. The gradient dyed yarn color really pops in this section! I’m already thinking of my next project with this weaving design.

Off the loom

Caring for your handwoven…each handwoven is hand washed in cold water with a mild detergent once off the loom. I like to use unscented SOAK. Sqeeze excess water without wringing and hang to dry. I will often spin dry and put in dryer, but did not due to the long floats in this piece. Press or steam with iron when damp as it will allow Tencel to shine.