Finally beautiful printed scarves

After 5 months of experimenting, I was confident enough to purchase some silk scarves and begin eco printing them with the idea of selling my work. Since I showed them at Thames Creative Fibre last week and uploaded some to my Felt shop they have been selling like hot cakes.
Using only pigments found naturally in the plants, the printed scarves have fine details and mostly delicate colours. I plan to make more soon that give pinks and purples.  What I like the most are the surprises when a new colour emerges from a leaf or petal and the gentle impact of this craft on my environment. Leaves return to the earth via the compost, mordants are simple like rusty nails and seawater. I use steam to extract the pigments and I gather the plants on walks or sometimes I spot them on road verges or in friend's gardens. I've even knocked on doors and asked if I could gather samples. No one has ever said "No". I've used metres of silk testing plants and always there are surprises.
These have all sold but I will put more photos in more recent blogs.

Spaced warp and weft scarves

I wanted a way to highlight my handspinning and this is one solution. I spaced the handspun warp and then spaced the mohair weft. In the above image you can see the paper spacers placed across the scarf. The fibres used in the warp were merino, alpaca and silk. You can see some pink merino trapped in alpaca and also a fine pink boucle plyed around a thick white merino yarn.

 To further strengthen the interweaving of the warp and weft I gently felted the mohair with warm soapy water. the result was a lovely lacy scarf that is very light and soft to wear.

Dramatic red and black mobius scarf

A acarf to keep away the winter chills.

I'm finding that as soon as I weave one scarf I have ideas for the next  and the next with the result that my couch is covered in trays of yarns grouped by colour. I keep spinning more to add to the trays.
This one is was on the loom ready to weave when I thought of adding one strand of white boucle yarn to the mix to give the scarf an accent.


The thickest handspun warp is a pinkish red one with coils of black all spun from soft merino. Almost all the yarns are hand dyed including the finer 2 ply yarns which subtely change in colour from red to grey to black.
 

In places I have the black coils floating above the scarf. There's one at the bottom of the picture.

Autumn colours Mobius Scarf

I'm in two minds whether this is a scarf or a cowl. I've used different shades of mohair for the weft interspersed with tailspun Suri locks that I spun and dyed. It is wonderfully soft. The scarf is very versatile as it can be worn with the interwoven ends in front, on the shoulder of at the back. The cowl can also be deepened so that the fringed ends are mostly hidden.

 Here are the tailspun locks I used in the weft together with some 2 ply Suri that I used in the warp.

WOW mobius woven scarf

Having seen a mobius woven scarf  woven in Saori style by Jill Nikolene, I decided I wanted to make one. The scarf has no end as the threads from the front tie up are released to be used as weft at the other scarf end.
I put a 2.5m warp used an Ashford Knitters loom. The warp was a mix of handspun, hand dyed yarns and commercial yarns most of which I had overdyed. If you want to make one yourself follow Jill's instructions.
The length of the actual weaving was 1.9 m. Even though I thought I was following her method, when I cut the scarf from the back of the loom I found I had given it two twists. This doesn't matter as the scarf is long enough to accomodate the two.

Tailspun yarn,  fleece locks and spun beehives give a dynamic texture.

Here is the warp before weaving.

The scarf has been undone from the front beam, twisted, folded, wound back around the front beam. In the image on the right I have woven most of the front warp threads through the remaining warp attached to the back beam.


The colours are fiery like a brilliant sunset.




The result is a matrix of threads that can be worn in front, on the side or wherever.

Got there - 2nd woven scarf

I'm happy with this scarf. It is great to wear as it's long enough to arrange in different ways. The alpaca makes if super soft  and the edges are satisfyingly even (enough for me).

Close up of fleece locks.

The thick and thin yarn forms interesting waves in the centre of the image below.

All the yarns except one were handspun and dyed, not necessarily in that order by yours truely.

Knitted scarf from samples

Sitting at my wheel surrounded by my favourite spinning books I taught myself to spin these yarns. It was a case of read one, have a go, reread, have another go and read the other and so on. The books were Spin Art by Jacey Boggs and The Spinner's Book of Yarn Designs by Sarah Anderson.

I knitted the samples into a short scarf which has become much longer with wearing and tugging.

Bullions

Stacks

Beehives

Bullion loops