Designed and woven by Eileen Lee
Painted Warp Eyes Scarf
Designed and woven by Eileen Lee
I love designing projects with painted warps. Incorporating solid colors alongside painted warps is a beautiful and striking way to enhance color in your projects.
When working with painted warps, I prefer to warp from front to back so that I can arrange the colors as desired through the reed. To enhance the colors of the painted warp, I like to use a dark yarn (such as black, navy, or maroon) for the weft. It's always enjoyable to weave the project and observe how the warp colors transform.
Project Specs
Finished size: 10" wide and 75" long (excluding fringe)
Weave structure: twill
Number of warp ends: 273 (including floating selvedges)
Warp length: 3 yds (including take-up, shrinkage, loom waste, and fringe)
Width in reed: 11.3"
EPI: 24
PPI: 36
What You'll Need
- Warp: Valley Yarns 8/2 Tencel (100% lyocell 3360 yd/lb) Blue Ming (175 yds), Olive (175 yds), Amethyst (175 yds), and Natural (310 yds)
- Weft: Valley Yarns 8/2 Tencel (100% lyocell 3360 yd/lb) Navy (800 yds)
- Fiber Reactive Dyes: Use any colors you like—I chose to use blues, greens, and purples
- Soda ash
- Wolf Pup 8.10 or any 8-shaft loom with at least an 12" weaving width
- 12 dent reed
- One shuttle and bobbin
- Fringe Twister
- Your preferred dyeing supplies: buckets, plastic table covering, paint brushes or paint sponges
Materials
Equipment
Directions
Painting Your Warp
- Any time you are working with powders, wear a dust mask or respirator. Any time you are working with dye processes, wear gloves.
- Wind 100 ends of Natural. These will become your painted warp sections. Tie securely but not so tight that it will resist the dye. Tie the warp approximately every 18".
- Scour the warp: Prepare a bath of room-temperature water and mild soap. Place your warp in and let soak for 15 minutes. Scouring removes any processing oils. You also want the dye goods to be thoroughly wet.
- Prepare the scoured warp to accept color: Fill a bucket 2/3 of the way with room temperature water. Mix 1/3 cup of soda ash with about 1 cup of water and mix thoroughly until dissolved. Add more water as necessary. Add the solution to the bucket. Soak the warp in this bath for at least 15 minutes.
- Mix concentrated dyes: Mix 1/2 tablespoon of dye powder with a splash of hot water. Mash the powder and water together into a thick paste. Add more water as necessary, but it doesn’t take a lot! Mix until all the dye powder has dissolved. Add 1/2 cup of warm water and mix again—your dye solution is now ready to go.
- Cover a work surface with plastic wrap or a plastic
tablecloth. Lay out your dye solutions, tools, and the warp. Paint the colors
wherever you like. The wetter the warp, the more these colors will bleed.
- Wrap the warp in plastic—use plastic wrap or the table covering. Let sit for 24 hours.
- Rinse the dyed fiber until the water runs clear. Remove excess water and allow to dry.
Warping
- Wind the rest of the warp using your preferred method: you’ll need a total of 57 ends of each Blue Ming, Olive, and Amethyst.
- Warp the loom using your preferred method following the
color order and threading sequence. Sley the reed with 2 ends per dent for a
total of 24 EPI. Oftentimes when I am designing projects like this, I wind each
color separately and then design in the reed to see what order of colors I
prefer. Weight the floating selvedges at the back of the loom.
Weaving
- Wind a bobbin with the weft yarn.
- Leave at least 8" for the fringe.
- Leave a tail 5 times the width of the weaving at the start
and weave following the pattern draft for about an inch. Hemstitch in groups of
4 warps and 3 wefts.
- Continue to weave until you’ve reached approximately 80"
or your desired length. Hemstitch as you did at the beginning of the scarf.
- Remove the fabric from the loom, leaving 8" of unwoven warp on each side for fringe
- Twist the fringe in groups of 8 warps (2 hemstitching groups of 4 warp ends).
Finishing
- With mild soap, wash by hand in warm water by gently agitating. Leave fabric to soak for approximately 20 minutes.
- Air dry until scarf is almost dry and then press using a steam iron.
