105 Tones of Grey

In my last blog post, 90 Shades of Grey, I talked about a warp that I put on my loom in a rotation of six neutral values from white through grays to black. Since I still had a couple yards of warp left on my loom after completing a sampler using all of the neutrals in the weft, I thought about what else might be interesting to try out on the remainder of the warp.

When I am looking at possibilities in a particular type of yarn, particularly at a weaving conference or other venue where I can see the actual cones of yarn, I am often looking at how the colors might sequence together in a harmonious way. In October 2018 when I was on a teaching tour in Texas, I not only had the pleasure of staying with Tracy Kaestner, her husband and two poodles, but being in the enticingly dangerous situation of being in the same space as the Lone Star Loom Room. It’s pretty hard for me to resist the gorgeous colors and quality of the Venne 20/2 cotton, and if I had my way, and the space, I would own the entire inventory. While I had already succumbed to buying a dozen cones at her booth at a conference the previous summer, I still ended up having Tracy ship me another couple dozen or so cones in more of the colors.

Since my hallway lined with yarn shelves is already completely full, I now have arrays of cones of yarn in various spectra along the floor in my weaving studio. For me, it is unthinkable to store yarn out of sight in boxes or bins. Seeing the yarn is what gives me inspiration and ideas. So as long as there is an available surface, I will probably eventually end up lining it with cones of yarn.

I looked at a particularly lovely array of the Venne cotton in seven smoky colors that I thought would be fabulous to use as the weft in a rotation on the neutral warp.

Using one color for the top layer weft and another one for the bottom layer weft I wove a sequence of an inch or so in each of the six doubleweave layer combinations. Then I rotated each of the wefts to the next cone in the sequence and repeated the six layer combinations, and continued on until I had woven each of the layer combinations in each of the seven weft colors in each layer. Since going through this process systematically creates 15 unique color combinations for each weft color used, I ended up with 105 different tones of grey in the completed sampler.

Because the 20/2 Venne was half the size of the 10/2 perle cotton warp, the weft colors were even more subtle than if they had been of equal size. As I was weaving the piece and looking at it up close, each section looked pretty much like a variation of grey or a taupe-ish brown. It wasn’t until cutting off the weaving and seeing the piece as a whole that the shift from one weft color to the next became very apparent. Many neutrals have undertones rather than being pure values of white through black, but it can be hard to tell what they are when seen in isolation. This sampler showed me a lot about how to see the subtle undertones in an apparent neutral.

And this is the whole piece when viewed with a little more distance -

I found that I really like the effect of the 20/2 weft on the 10/2 warp. This piece has a lighter hand and nicer drape than the previous sampler that I wove with a 10/2 weft. I’ve experimented with this some before, using a finer weft than warp and have always liked the results. Since I tend to put a lot of color gradations in my warps this also makes the warp colors stand out even more.

This sampler was a lot of fun to weave and gives me all kinds of ideas of ways to extend it into larger designs. I’m looking forward to playing with this some more!