Black and white warps in doubleweave are so fun. I’ve used 1, 2, and 3 colors in the weft and just finished a 4 color weft project. I am trying to weave my paintings in watercolor, pastel and oil for some reason – maybe just because it is hard and fun at the same time.
I dyed silk yarn to match a pastel I have been working on and set out to make a sample of all of the colors you can make with 1 or 2 weft colors on the front and 1 warp color at a time on the front. I could have expanded the sampling by 30 to include versions where the warp alternated between color a and color b but I decided to leave that for another day.
Here are the weft colors – 10/2 and 8/2 silk – the one on the far right was too dark so it was not used:
I built a library of drafts in AdaCAD, my design software of choice, made labels for the samples and got to work.
Here is what it looked like all together on the loom. I think this is a great representation of lights and darks. Next time I will be looking for middle tones.
See enlargements of the unwashed samples below. I named them by [weft color number(s)][warp color number]-[weft floats][warp floats]. In the first sample it is red on top with 1/3 twill, 2/2 twill, 3/1 twill on white warp, then 3/1 twill, 2/2 twill, 1/3 twill on black warp. There is probably a convention I should be using but who has time for that?
After weaving the samples I mapped them to an image of a pastel I have been working on and ended up using 40 of the 60 values defined. Here’s an image on the loom of the result:
Next I think I will swap out the white in the warp for something more light middle toned to try to get some of the chalkiness out of the result – admittedly when it is washed it looks much better than the on-loom appearance but I think it might be better to throw white, or something like it, in the weft if I need it.
For this image, I got more neutral tones by mixing the complementary weft colors rather than trying to grey things down by alternating the black and white warp on the front. Can’t wait to see it off the loom and wet finished. The image above represents about a sixth of the piece. I’ll share it when I finish tying on a new warp.