Tuesday, September 9, 2008

WEAVING BEGINS ON CRACKLE EXCHANGE SAMPLES

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

TREADLING AND COLOR

In each block I treadled the pattern color only on shaft 5. Between each block with pattern color on shaft 5, I treadled Weaving begun a transition group using only the background color--green. For this group I treadled 2 sets of treadles 3 through 8.

A reminder. The treadling is polychrome treadling with no tabbies.

I changed pattern colors with each block group. The colors are pale yellow, lime green, pink and light green. I did not do them exactly sequentially but devised the following order. Letting small letters represent the colors, here is the scheme:

1. a, b,
2. a, b, c
3. b, c
4. b, c, d
etc.

There are a total of eight groups and finishing them brings me back round to the beginning.

I have been rather enjoying this. It is more rapid and relaxing weaving than the art pieces were, but the color scheme helps keep any boredom at bay. It's still not speed weaving, however. I continue to weave with the bobbins themselves rather than putting them in the shuttles.

PHOTOGRAPHY ISSUES

Getting the color right in this photo was very difficult. The first thing that happened when I started the photo session was very strange. The reds came blue. I tried different settings but nothing worked. This had never happened to me before so I was quite befuddled. The light I use is overhead lighting from a ceiling light/fan. The secondary lights are a small lamp on each side of the loom. There is some natural light that comes in from the windows, but this does not seem to confuse the camera particularly. And I turn off the florescent light in the neighboring kitchen.

What was going on?

I looked at the lamp bulbs. My husband had changed one of them to one of those energy saving florescent tube things. I turned it off and all was well. Not completely well as there were still difficulties.

There were two difficulties.

  • Getting the red the correct shade
  • Getting the pattern colors in the center and at the end to light up

I managed to get the reds pretty close by playing with balancing red and green in my software. The problem with the pattern colors is that, though they show pretty well were they should (in the end blocks and in the two blocks on either side of center), they show up too well in some of the other blocks. In reality, they do show up there but with much more of a shadowy effect, and effect I quite like.

The other color problem is that when woven, the light yellow and the lime green look exactly alike. They both just look like yellow. In this particular dark and rather intense warp, I would need to have the yellow and the lime green both be probably Yellow amd lime bobbins at full saturation instead of as light as they are.

But take a look at them on the bobbins.




Related Posts:

Polychrome Treadling Writ Large
8 Crackle Blocks on 4 Shafts Continued

"Weaving Begins on Crackle Exchange Samples" was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on September 9, 2008. © 2008 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina

4 comments:

Leigh said...

I like your pattern color sequence and really like the colors you chose. Very nice.

I agree that photographing color is a challenge. There is some sort of software which gives almost exact color representation, but I cannot recall anything about it.

Peg in South Carolina said...

Thank you Leigh. The photo as posted is still problematic, despite my working with it. Part of it is probably the lighting. The supplemental lighting normally comes from each side but I had to turn the lamp on the left side off. I did not try it with no supplemental lighting. Part of the problem also is rendering the subtlety of what is going on. There is a 1-day workshop on photographing textiles at the SDA conference this summer. Well, i won't be going to that.....!

Anonymous said...

What a lovely piece this is, Peg. How nice for you, too, to be able to have a more relaxed treadling and throwing sequence after doing the art pieces to give your brain a bit of a break.

Do you ever find that going back to something that is less challenging can allow your brain to percolate new ideas while you work away? Almost as if it is working away in the background?

That seems to be my own process and I'm curious if other creatives have that happen too.

Am sure loving your reds -- very rich. Your photos are always top notch, even when you're challenged by confounding variables.

You have become quite the expert at "bobbin weaving" -- hmmm.. there's a pun in there somewhere about bobbin' and weavin' but I just can't put my finger on it. . . :-) :-)

It will be interesting to see how it feels to you when you go back to throwing a shuttle. It will probably feel like greased lightening.

Weave on!
Jane <--- who is off now to go down your list of this week's blog reads

Peg in South Carolina said...

Jane, yes, my mind does relax a bit and free-form thinking comes into play, until I start focusing on how much I have woven and how much more I need to weave........ Yes, weaving with shuttles will be interesting!