Hand painted warp weaving

Warp it! Paint it! Weave it! with instructor Kathie Roig at John C. Campbell Folk School. | Visit us at www.folkschool.org for more about our classes.

Earlier this summer, I wove this prototype hand-painted cotton ruana/shawl. I loved the way it turned out so much that I'm in the process of making three more for the Etsy shop. (If they make it that far. I've got tentative nibbles on two of the three already.) This week I've been working on measuring and painting the warp. A couple of folks have asked me how I do that, so I took some pictures as I went along. I used 3/2 Valley mercerized perle cotton from Webs (www.yarn.com) and the Dharma…

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It is great fun to be able to flip back and forth on two different projects. They are both scarves, but the color and structures are sooooo different, that it makes it fun. I am weaving a single two-tie (summer and winter) with a painted warp. The weft is black and the tabby is black sewing thread. There is enough plain weave in the design to help show off the warp colors.

Want the beauty of a hand painted warp but don’t have the space or equipment required? In this class we will explore different methods of painting your warp (and perhaps the weft) using fabric paints.

Weaving is like painting in some ways. Your warp and weft colors are like tubes of paint, giving you basic colors to start with. Your draft is like your palette and brush, where you take your original paint colors, mix them into new colors, and then place them in your fabric. Often, when we think about color in weaving, we think only about the colors of the yarns we choose. But this is like thinking only about the colors in your paint tubes. We also need to think about how the drafts will…

Weaves Universe: Warp Hand Painted - a great idea!