Thread and Eye

Textile Ephemera

[stitcherywitchery]

I've been wanting to learn how to dye yarn, but Google is alternately uninformative and overwhelming in conflicting information. Do you have any resources you can share on how to dye and/or resources for bare yarn? Thanks!

I’ve actually never dyed yarn, so I’m going to turn this question over to my lovely followers.

Does anyone have advice for Anon?

[threadandeye]

Paula Burch’s Website is an amazingly complete resource for dyeing yarn. I use the Procion MX dyes in my studio, and I quite like them. There is a ton of information on Paula Burch’s site about proper use and handling. A nice thing about Procion is that you can dye from mixing primaries instead of buying thousands of colors. I have six dyes in my studio: Magenta, Yellow, Cyan, Brown, Black, and Orange. Orange only because it’s hard to mix a true orange and I’m lazy. 

[threadandeye]

A few snapshots from the spinning wheel. A particularly lovely Navajo Churro roving, a shot of the full bobbin, and a snap of the sample yarns, both the single (bottom) and the two-ply (top). 

The Navajo Churro, or simply "Churro", is a breed of sheep originating from the Spanish Churra obtained by the Navajo, Hopi, and other Native American nations of the southwest around the 16th century during the Spanish Conquest. The breed is extremely adaptable and hardy, and their wool is superb. They are a double coated breed, meaning they have a coarse protective topcoat and a downy soft undercoat, but when these fibers are blended together it makes a yarn uniquely suited to rug and tapestry weaving.

[threadandeye]

The Autoknitter Sock Machine!  This is a new piece in my collection. In addition to being a collectible fiber antique, it is also a heck of a workhorse. The Autoknitter machine was made in England, Canada, and the U.S. Though produced in different countries over a few decades, there are defining characteristics: they all have the same style of V-cam in the front, the same style of tear drop lifter cams, plus the identifying “y-shaped” yarn mast. My machine is stamped “Made in Canada”. It is likely from the mid 1920s, and is the “duplex” model, meaning it came with two different cylinders for knitting different weights of fabric.  I’ve only had the machine for a month, but I’m happy to say I’ve scaled the steep learning curve and I’ve produced a few pairs of socks. The “sunburst” colorway was my first pair. 

[threadandeye]

Embroidery pieces from my studio, past, present, and future. 

[threadandeye]

The creation of a textile is the culmination of many disciplines coming together as one. The weaver must play an artist to create something aesthetically pleasing, must become a mathematician to number, measure, and account for threads and proper weights of threads, must wear the hat of a chemist to extract and prepare dyes that will be steadfast and accurate, and must become a physicist to understand the mechanics and actions of the loom. 

The loom in my studio is a 200cm Glimakra Sovereign. This is the weaving width, meaning I can weave a textile up to 84″ in width. I am not sure of my capacity for length, it is surely over 100m.  The loom I use has four shafts. A shaft is a set of bars that carries heddles, a heddle carries (for our current purposes) a single thread. There are many heddles on a shaft and it is through the raising and lowering of these shafts that we operate the threads for the weaving process. 

The inspiration for this project was a Swedish krokbragd rug I found online. I used primary colors of Procion MX, plus orange, on a white cotton warp, to achieve the effect I wanted. The threading at the loom was “rosepath”, a traditional twill threading.