Sunday, July 10, 2011

Woven Tweed sampler

My recent project is this 8 shaft tweed fabric sampler using handspun yarns where the fibre is dyed first and blended to achieve subtle colouring. My son calls this yarn a heather in the carpet yarn dyeing/spinning trade. Its requires a lot of experimenting and sampling to get colours that meld together in the yarn but still have enough value differences to keep them interesting.



Each of the shades is woven as a block across the weft and warp. I like several of the colourways, so will have to decide which one or two I'm going to use in the final cloth.




Here's a closeup of the pattern. A broken twill which appears as an embossed texture across the warp. The sunshine in the room has washed out the colours in the photos, they are a little deeper in real life.




A recent trip to Milton and we went back over the North East Valley road. You look down on the beautiful harbour and Port Chalmers where we lived for a couple of years.
The water was like a mirror, perfect for a photo or two.



Then on to the Qualityarns spinning mill housed in the old Bruce Woollen mill. Picked up some fibre and weaving yarns. Its a great shop and the yarns are so reasonably priced. This is the mill that spins all the Flagstaff alpaca yarns I get to dye and play with. They do a great job so the long wait sometimes is worth it.