More saturation - tones

Another way to desaturate a color is by making tones of the color.  Toning a hue down is adding a gray that is the same tonal value (lightness or darkness) of the original hue.






 
To do this with dyes on white yarn, I had to first find a gray that was the same relative value as my saturated color. So I dyed some grays using varying amounts of black dye on the same white yarn.  The grayscale version of the photo show that the blue is lighter than any of my trial grays.

So I tried again.This time I think the next lighter gray (labeled F) fits the best.

Then I used mixtures of this gray and my original blue to create the tones of blue.

Cover Girl - again !!?

No, this is not a repeat post!

Shuttle, Spindle & Dyepot, the quarterly for the Handweavers Guild of America, is sporting my Updraft, Downdraft yardage that I submitted for last year's Convergence weaving conference.  Whoohoo!

5-Day Art Challenge in One Day

I've been "tagged" or asked a few times to participate in a posting challenge that's going around Facebook.  You're supposed to post 5 images of your art, one per day, and "tag" another artist each day.  I guess it's sort of the social media equivalent of a chain letter.  (Remember those, when we used to send letters by snail mail, those of you of a certain age?)

I'm doing well when I am able to post once a week, so I don't think I'm up to the challenge.  So instead I'm doing mine in one post, today. 

For my 5 artists, I will name 5 other contemporary fiber artists who work in sprang.  Some are participating in the 5-day challenge already, and one I'm not even sure is even on FB.  But their work is a must-see.

Check out Chieko Aihara's superb work: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Sprang-and-Textile-of-Chieko-Aihara/219881031809

Graciela Foradori not only does nice sprang work but also exquisite hand-manipulated gauze weave: https://es-la.facebook.com/graciela.foradori

Edith Meusnier creates fantastic huge outdoor installation art using sprang: http://www.edithmeusnier.net/

Carol James is a sprang and fingerweaving evangelist:  https://www.facebook.com/pages/Carol-James-fingerweaver-sprang-artist/245302248842412

Ellen Shipley is the only other person I've ever found trying to combine weaving with sprang: http://wefttomyowndevices.blogspot.com/2012/08/bent-cane-sprang-loom.html

And for a bonus, Blue's web site http://www.denblauwenswaen.nl/en/sprang/
and her facebook page https://www.facebook.com/Sprangbraiding are great resources.

Here are 5 images of my work... enjoy!

#1: Trade Winds. 15"x16"x2".  cotton, cottolin. double weave, sprang, pleating.

#2: His Hands Are Mutes. 25"x30".  cotton.  double weave, sprang.

#3: Involution. 18"x21"x3".  linen.  double weave, sprang, pleating.

 #4: Regeneration.  22"x34".  wool.  twill weave, sprang.

#5: Chart and Compass.  11"x9.5".  silk.  double weave, sprang.

Studying Saturation - tints

In our study subgroup of my guild, "Centered on Color & Fiber", this year we are focusing on two qualities of color, saturation and value.  For my exercise in saturation (aka intensity of a color), I have been playing with different ways to desaturate a color, or give it less intensity, when dyeing yarn.

One way is by adding white to the color, or in the case of dyeing, using less dye on white yarn.  Adding white to a color doesn't change its hue, it just makes its value lighter; these lighter colors are called tints of a color.

As I'd remembered from previous dyeing sessions, when you reduce the amount of dye in a linear manner, the darker more saturated colors in a series like this look closer in tonal value to each other than the lighter more pastel tints.

Here's a grayscale version of the same photo; some of the darker colors are hard to tell apart.

The darkest ball of yarn is dyed at a depth of shade (DOS) of 1.0.  This means that for every gram of fiber (yarn), I used 1 ml of a 1% dye solution.  You can use more dye and get even more saturated color, I guess until all the places on the fiber that can accept the dye are taken.  I didn't push that limit.  I'm just defining the DOS 1.0 color as my most saturated blue for this project.

A New-to-me Weave

I have been sampling this structure.  I haven't done much in tapestry weave before, and I wasn't sure if this would work the way I have in mind for my larger project.

I'm trying to emulate this stamped metal material they sometimes use to make stair treads - and the outdoor tabletop in this photo.

Better shaped Ds

There - the shape of these Ds looks better to me.

 Here's the previous trial for comparison.

A Year's Worth of Towels

2014 was the Year of the Towels for me.  Here they all are posing together, one for each month.  The drafts and my notes are in archived posts.  The original article is at the online digital archive of weaving.

I found that making these towels was a fun way to explore different structures.  I also gained confidence in working with linen.  Seeing the designs gave me some ideas for towels I'd like to design myself.

I wonder what 2015 will have in store for my weaving path.  What would you like to see in the coming year?