Designing…or trying to

Designing is a process. Colour combinations change, designs change. It can take a long time.

Who knows how this will turn out, but I thought I’d give you an idea of the start and finish points of a design. This process took place over three days. I started with an idea, changed the colours, changed the design, took time to think and reflect, came back and changed something else. You get the picture.

As I dye my own silk I either have too much of a colour or not enough. This time I dyed four particular colours. Inevitably they didn’t turn out quite as particular as I would have liked but I am not scientific with my dye process and have to go with what I get. The first picture, which you may have seen before, shows the four colours I originally chose.

The second picture is the more or less the design idea I had in my head (it looked OK in my head!). The third picture is what I am going to weave. And finally, the fourth picture shows the colours I am actually going to use.

A few design and colour changes

The design is very different to my original idea. It is not dissimilar to some scarves I made during the first lockdown, but I have changed it slightly by adding different treadle combinations. The beauty of my Megado loom is that changing the treadling is simple with just a few clicks on the computer.

Usually I warp for two scarves and change either the threading, the treadling or some of the colours for the second one. By then I have an idea of the warp’s character, and believe me, they all have a character! Also, what will work with the colours I have finally gone with. Notice I didn’t say ‘finally chosen’, because I never really think that I have chosen the colours, they just appear.

And now, back to the warping…