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[00:00:00.000] – Dawn
Welcome to the live lecture for December. We have lots to talk about with Tien and the holiday weaving class. We will probably not have a whole lot of time for questions, but if we do, put them in the Question and Answer interface in the bottom of your screen. You can type a question. If you want to chat or say hello or say things that are not questions, use the Chat feature. Let’s see. I can’t think of anything else.
[00:00:36.020] – Tien
I can’t either. I think we’re good.
[00:00:39.050] – Dawn
I think we’re good. No, what? Janet, say something. I haven’t done it in a long time.
[00:00:43.620] – Janet
I’ve got the spiel so memorized. You can turn on captions for yourself on your end with a little button in the menus. We do have the transcript running, so you can turn that on and see everything that was said back to the start of the webinar.
[00:00:59.000] – Tien
Okay. All righty then.
[00:01:03.470] – Dawn
All right, and with that, I go away into moderator space. I’ll be here paying attention.
[00:01:08.800] – Tien
Wait, Dawn. Show everyone your mug first.
[00:01:11.590] – Dawn
Oh.
[00:01:13.050] – Tien
Dawn made it. It’s beautiful.
[00:01:15.650] – Dawn
I’m a potter. It’s a very tricky glaze called Shino, one of my favorites.
[00:01:20.530] – Tien
There you go. Okay.
[00:01:22.410] – Janet
I’m just here along for the ride. Tien is going to be talking through the lecture. But I will be here, if not on screen then off in moderator space with Dawn.
[00:01:34.030] – Tien
Hey, don’t get into too much hanky panky up in moderator space there.
[00:01:38.913]
[LAUGHTER]
[00:01:40.020] – Janet
Here I come, Dawn.
[00:01:45.000] – Tien
All right. Let’s start the live lecture. So I’m going to share my screen. And I don’t have a ton of slides because this is mostly demo, but here we go.
[00:01:58.610] – Tien
The first thing I want to talk about–actually, let me back up. Weaving for Winter Holidays is about working with specific palettes. In that class, I focused on the three palettes that I went through, rather than focusing on the theory of how everything works. With this live lecture, I’m going to reverse it and talk a little bit about the general principles of working with a limited palette and then how it applies with the specific palettes that are in the class.
[00:02:33.480] – Tien
So starting with the general principles. So when you’re working with a limited palette, you want to avoid mixing the colors together because even if you don’t get brown, which is what you get when you mix green and red, you get a color that isn’t in the palette. So in this particular case, even if you like this brown, it’s not generally considered a Christmas-y color. And so, in general, you want to keep your colors as separate as possible.
[00:03:02.500] – Tien
Now, some colors also mix more than others. Red and green are about the same value, and as a result, they turn into–they blend quite a bit. Whereas if you’re talking about the blue and white for Hanukkah, those colors are very far apart in value. White is very light, and blue is relatively dark, so they don’t blend nearly as much.
[00:03:25.820] – Tien
I’m going to show how that works. Let me exit this, go to my first demo draft. This is a draft out of the holiday drafts from Handweaving.net. I set this one up for Hanukkah because it’s got nine candles, so it’s like a menorah on four shafts. And it works actually in blue and white because you have high contrast between the colors and the colors aren’t blending a whole lot. Sorry. Because the blue and the white have such different values, they don’t blend a whole lot, and you can see the design clearly.
[00:04:05.070] – Tien
Now, this same draft would be a nightmare if you were to do it in–let me zoom in a little bit–if you were to do this in red and green, like this, and let me shrink that down and replace here. You can see how, one, the pattern isn’t really showing, and, two, the colors are not distinct, and where they are mixing, they’re mixing into kind of a brownish color if you really shrink down the size. What you’re getting where the colors are crossing is not so much a nice, bright red and green, but basically a brownish-red on a green ground. That’s because the red and green are very similar colors, and they blend into a color that’s not in the palette.
[00:05:07.790] – Tien
Now, if you were to make it so that the red was a light green and put it on a dark green, those two colors are more different in value, and as a result, they don’t blend nearly as much. So now you have more value contrast, and your candles show more clearly. They’re still a little bit brownish, and, again, that’s because red and green naturally blend into brown. But because there’s more of a value difference, they don’t blend together as much as they would if you were using red and green of the same value. So that’s how it looks like with the Christmas and Yule colors.
[00:05:54.780] – Tien
Now, what happens if you take this and make this the Lunar New Year colors? Let’s go here. Actually, with Lunar New Year, traditionally, you do red as–I’m just going to change this to a different color. Traditionally, you do red as the background. Green as–sorry, I shouldn’t talk and try to color at the same time. Normally, you use a yellow figure on a red ground for a Chinese–sorry–Lunar New Year. I grew up with Chinese New Year. I am using the wrong red. Here we go.
[00:06:41.260] – Tien
Traditionally, it’s done with red forming the majority of the design and yellow as the sort of design element. That’s because the base color for Lunar New Year is red. Red is the lucky color.
[00:07:02.090] – Tien
Now if I make that darker red, then you can see that the design appears more clearly because now there’s more value difference. Going back to the other, the lighter red, you can see that with less value difference between the yellow and the red, the design is not nearly as clear. Also notice that you’re starting to get more orange where the red and the yellow are blending together. Again, if you change the values, use a slightly darker red, then your design shows more clearly. You get less color blending.
[00:07:46.440] – Tien
So when you are working with a palette that has colors that are the same size, you want to be really careful–sorry–the same value, you want to be really careful to avoid mixing the colors together. So that’s the first part.
[00:08:04.940] – Tien
The other thing is that if you were to, for example, if you were using plain weave or something like that–I might have a plain weave in here. Yes, I do. You would want to be really careful about what colors you’re creating. So if I were to use blue, now I’m suddenly creating a whole bunch of colors that are not in the Christmas or Yule palette. That’s what I meant by saying in general you want to avoid mixing colors.
[00:08:38.370] – Tien
If I were to choose green as weft, then, again, I’m shifting the red towards brown because that’s what happens when you mix those colors. Let’s see. That was it for that demo.
[00:08:56.720] – Tien
Let’s talk a little about what happens when you use a color that isn’t in the palette. Now, I’m kind of cheating here because I’m showing you a painted warp, not a holiday warp, but it’s a lot easier to see the effect with all the colors in the painted warp. So sometimes, especially if you’re using the palette colors just in stripes–let me see if I got an example here. Yeah. So if you’re using the palette colors just in stripes, you might wind up with something that looks like this.
[00:09:31.850] – Tien
Now, in this case, you want to be careful about what color you’re choosing as weft. Because if you choose a color that is too assertive, like, say, this blue, it starts to compete with your palette colors and can make the design much harder to see.
[00:09:52.560] – Tien
Black is generally a pretty safe color, except that black is also not part of the Christmas palette. So this, for example, would be good for Kwanzaa, where the colors are red, green, and black with the occasional yellow highlights. But you want to be careful about choosing colors that aren’t going to interfere.
[00:10:20.630] – Tien
In this case, we’ve got a bird’s eye twill. And you can see that when you use a neutral, this is black weft up in the top right, then it doesn’t change the colors. It darkens things, but it doesn’t make a big difference to the original palette. Whereas if you look down here with a cyan warp–with a cyan weft, it’s shifting all the colors, and it’s moving them outside the original palette. So in general, you want to be careful about your weft color choices.
[00:10:56.520] – Tien
So let’s go here. And let me undo that last thing. Again, here we have stripes of different colors. And depending on what weft we choose, we might get something that looks like the original colors only darker. If you’re using a lighter silver, then you can see how that starts to bleach out the colors. But the colors are still reds and greens and golds. They’re just lighter than they were before.
[00:11:33.490] – Tien
If I were to pick a color out of left field, as far as the traditional palette goes, you can see how that completely changes things. If you are using stripes in the warp as a way of separating the colors, you want to be mindful of which colors you’re choosing.
[00:12:00.050] – Tien
Now, let’s see. I wanted to talk a bit about the specific strategies. So for example, there are four basic strategies for avoiding color mixing. You can use the colors in warp only or in weft only and use a neutral weft or some other weft that goes well with the colors. You can use a separating draft, a draft that doesn’t blend colors. You can use predominantly one color in warp and weft. And this isn’t specifically a strategy, but if you are using colors with strong value contrast, they will tend to blend less, like we saw with the blue and white candles here. The more value difference, the less the colors will blend together.
[00:12:50.750] – Tien
Let’s go through these in order. To make sure that two colors will never blend, the easiest thing to do is put them so that they go just in one direction. In this case, I’ve got red and green in stripes, but the weft is a solid black. When you’re doing this, there’s a couple of ways that you can even–the name of the game is to minimize the impact of the weft color because it’s about the stripes, and it’s really about your original palette. So how do you minimize the impact of the weft color?
[00:13:35.430] – Tien
So a neutral weft will change the hues of the palette least. So you could use something like black. You could use something like gray or white. Or sometimes you can use colors that are close to those colors, but not exactly precisely neutral. So if I go to here, if I use a dark navy blue as weft–I wouldn’t do this–or actually, in this case, let’s go with a dark brick color. Then that functions similarly to black, not exactly like black, but is a little more colorful in the red spaces. It will brown out the green slightly.
[00:14:25.760] – Tien
But because it’s a darker, duller color, it won’t assert itself the way it would if it were a brilliant light red or a pink, for example. This has much more impact on the design because it’s so much lighter and it’s more saturated. Down here at chocolate brown, it’s going to have much less impact. The closer it is to black or gray, the less impact it’s going to have.
[00:14:59.900] – Tien
Now, there are a couple different ways of emphasizing the warp. In this case, I’m using plain weave, and that gives a 50-50 mix of warp and weft. But if I wanted to change this to–let’s see, let me zoom in a little. If I change this tie-up to make it 3/1 twill instead–why is this–oh, tie-up. I need to change. Ah, I’m in the Color Editor. Let me go to the Draft Editor.
[00:15:38.200] – Tien
So now if I change the tie-up, like this, let’s see, to a 3/1 twill, now I’m seeing a lot more of the design. Now I’m seeing a lot more stripes because I’ve just made it warp emphasis on this side. If I go to the other side, it’s weft emphasis, and so you’ll see much less of the original palette.
[00:16:06.500] – Tien
This is useful when you’re seeing one side of things. For example, it works well for a table runner where you only see one side, but not so well for the warp–not so well for a scarf where you would see both sides. That’s one way of emphasizing the warp, change the draft so that it’s more warp dominant.
[00:16:28.540] – Tien
If I were to–hold on. I was informed by the cat that the door had to be open. Another option is to use a denser sett and/or a thinner weft. Those are much less visible. And so when you combine that with a gray or black weft, then it can become really close to invisible. Let me see.
[00:17:04.600] – Tien
Here is an example of this at work. We have different weft sizes on the left. This is woven on a rigid heddle. On the top, you have doubled 8/2 cotton or might be doubled 10/2, I can’t remember which, in the top section of the sample and single threads in the weft, on the bottom. So the top weft is double the size of the bottom weft in each of these photos. And you can see the weft has a lot more impact. Up here, you see dots of gray and dots of green, and down here you see a field that’s mostly green with a few gray dashes.
[00:17:56.620] – Tien
The higher the contrast between the weft and the warp, the more clearly it will show and the less the colors will blend. So this up here on top is a gray weft, and it blends in pretty well. This down here is a white weft, and it does not blend nearly as much. If you look at this, the effect is green and white and, again, green with white dashes as opposed to feeling like a field of pure green.
[00:18:36.310] – Tien
Then the same thing, of course, on here where you have the red and the white. And the effect is really most pronounced with the black because there’s such a stark value contrast. Those colors really don’t blend at all. Then if you look at this section over here, this is basically a composite of these sections, but including black, as well.
[00:18:58.750] – Tien
The other thing that you’ll–no–so with black, black is a pretty non-assertive color, and so it tends to fade into the background more, and it tends to intensify the colors a little more. If you look at this black versus the gray, the black really pops forward the other colors, but at the price of darkening things a bit.
[00:19:29.360] – Tien
The gray here is maintaining the value of the green pretty well, but because the gray is slightly lighter than the green, it’s diluting it. So black gives an intensity to the color. The gray gives more of a softer feel.
[00:19:49.620] – Tien
So when you’re looking for a weft that will go well with the different colors, black will intensify things most, but it doesn’t work with all colors. If we go back to here–and let’s undo this and undo this. If we’re back to plain weave–hold on. Let me take a look at this again. Right. Okay, I remember what I was going to say.
[00:20:23.530] – Tien
So let’s get some colors. If we were working with the Hanukkah palette–this is working okay because I’m working with the Christmas palette, which is very similar in value throughout the entire palette. But if you were to use the Hanukkah colors–and I’m just adding them here–for the stripes, you might run into a problem finding a weft. And I’ll demonstrate that in a moment. Replace Colors. Let’s just make this blue. Let’s make this white. And then let’s just make this blue and this silver. Okay. So this is not the world’s best composition, but that’s okay.
[00:21:18.740] – Tien
So now if I try to choose a weft color, I run into a bit of a challenge. So I can use the same blue, in which case my white goes to essentially a light blue. Or I can choose–let’s suppose I choose a gray. Let’s do a medium gray here. I’m going to add a black while I’m at it.
[00:21:45.890] – Tien
It’s hard to choose a neutral color if the two warp colors are very different in value. That’s because if you choose gray, when you shrink it down, you no longer really have white and you no longer really have blue. It kind of interferes with both colors about equally. If you use black, then you really lose the white. You can kind of see that. So it’s not in the Hanukkah palette anymore. I could use white, as well. Blue and white are really the best options if you’re working with extreme value differences or sticking within the same palette. So here, I’m using the same palette. If I decided to use gold, then, again, I’m moving outside of the original palette, and the gold is starting to take over.
[00:22:50.290] – Tien
So with Hanukkah colors, you’re typically best off choosing either white or blue as a weft. That’s not true, of course, if you’re using Christmas colors, which is why it’s important to think about the value differences in your palette and also about the color blends.
[00:23:10.050] – Tien
If I were using the Lunar New Year colors, they behave quite similarly to the Hanukkah colors, except there’s not quite as much value contrast. Let’s see here. And the colors blend more gracefully. So let’s do red and yellow stripes, and let’s do Replace Colors. If I were doing this with red and yellow–and let’s do a gold in between.
[00:23:47.850] – Tien
Now, of course, blue is no longer the ideal color. If I choose a gray, like that, it’s dulling out both colors about equally, but it’s also giving the yellow a greenish tinge. In general, gray works with most colors, but it tends not to work as well with holiday palettes because they are so saturated.
[00:24:14.970] – Tien
Now, if I were to use yellow, now the yellow is kind of taking over. If I were to use red, that turns my yellow orange, but it’s less disruptive than the yellow was. I could also sort of split the difference because these colors are all in the same segment, and so they follow the Two Primary Rule, and use an orange weft without resulting in duller colors. And so now I’ve got a red-orange, and I’ve got a yellow-orange, which, again, are falling outside the original palette.
[00:24:57.540] – Tien
So when you’re working with stripes, often it can be hard to find a weft that lets you make the most of all your colors, particularly if you’re using something like plain weave, which naturally blends the colors together. That’s why using something like a warp-dominant draft, like this one, can be so valuable because it reduces the impact of the weft color.
[00:25:32.560] – Tien
The same thing for using a denser sett or the thinner weft. Basically, you want to have as little weft as possible showing because often it’s not possible to choose a really good weft color.
[00:25:47.770] – Tien
Let’s see. Another option to avoid that color mixing that you’re trying to avoid is to use either a separating draft, which is a draft that doesn’t mix warp and weft colors, or to do color and weave, which is a draft that uses colored stripes as well as the draft to create the illusion of large patches of solid color. This one here is a color and weave. It’s got stripes of yellow in the weft and stripes of yellow in the warp. So it creates these squares of solid yellow and squares of solid red. But then in between, there are sections where yellow crosses red, and that’s what creates the arms of the pinwheel. I’ll show you that in a moment.
[00:26:42.510] – Tien
Let’s talk first about separating drafts. Not that one. Here we go. With this one here, there’s three different types of drafts in this diagram. There is the–let me make this a little bigger. We have the top draft, which is a separating draft. This one is from the Color Mixing class. And it’s mostly black and it’s mostly white in areas, but there’s very few areas of blended gray. So this down here, this is mostly plain weave, so it blends colors together a lot. And in the middle, there’s some areas of pure black and some areas of pure white, but there’s also areas of blended color.
[00:27:31.480] – Tien
This makes a huge difference if you’re weaving for Christmas or Yule. Let’s see. Replace Colors. Because if you’re using a green and red of equal value, one of these will give you not really a very clear pattern because you can’t get a really clear pattern with two colors of the same value. But you can see that on the bottom where you have the blending draft, it’s mixing the red and green together to produce brown. Up here where you have the separating draft, you have red and green.
[00:28:10.890] – Tien
Now, if you change that–again, even with a separating draft, you have to worry a little more about value contrast. But if I were to change that green to a darker green, you can see how the difference in value, one, makes the pattern show more clearly, and, two, reduces the amount of color blending. So separating drafts are a great way of keeping the two colors from mixing. If you’re working with two colors that blend into a color that isn’t in the palette, then separating drafts are much more valuable than blending drafts.
[00:28:48.090] – Tien
If you’re working with two colors that blend differently, so for example, the white and blue of Hanukkah, here you have strong value contrast between the colors, so they naturally mix less. And the blue and the white mix into sort of a lighter blue. And while that’s not in the official palette, it’s close enough that it’s not disastrous the way that it would be if you were using red and green.
[00:29:19.550] – Tien
When you select drafts, think about how much they blend colors. For example, in this draft here, this is sort of partway between separating and blending. You have these areas of solid color here, and you have these areas of mixed color here. Depending on how you set it up, of course, you can then have–here I’m using stripes of different colors and a solid weft. That’s keeping the red and the green from mixing.
[00:29:57.470] – Tien
Now, if I wanted to use the red and the green in both warp and weft, what I could do is–zoom in–use a light red, this light red here, and a dark green, and that would reduce the amount of mixing. Let’s just add a stripe of dark green here, and let’s add a stripe of dark red here, like this. And now there’s not nearly as much color mixing as there would be if I were using a light red and a light green. Let me just darken that down just very slightly because right now, of course, you’re getting no pattern at all where the green crosses the green. I want to demo. We’ll use that medium red.
[00:31:13.050] – Tien
Now, here you can see that the colors are blending together where the red and the green are of similar values. And then you can see up top how they’re blending much less where they’re of about equal value. I’m zooming out here, so that’s a little more obvious. Here you don’t have much of a pattern, and you have some color blending that you don’t want. Here you have more pattern visible because you’re putting a light color against a dark color, and you’re also using a light color with a color of slightly different value–with strong value contrast, and as a result, the colors don’t blend nearly as much.
[00:31:55.470] – Tien
So there’s tricks you can do even within the Christmas palette that will minimize the mixing of your reds and greens. Mostly if you choose a light red with a dark green or a light green with a dark red, that will also work.
[00:32:13.960] – Tien
We talked about separating–I showed separating drafts with Christmas/Yule and Hanukkah colors. With the Lunar New Year colors, which I included partly because it’s interesting to see different results. Let’s do it with red and gold. It’s interesting how very differently these palettes behave.
[00:32:42.720] – Tien
Here, again, you have color mixing. You have the separating draft, creating red and yellow design here that’s very clear. Down here you have the blending draft that’s mixing the colors together a bit more. So here you would get orange–well, more like a reddish-orange, where the colors are blending. If you increase the value contrast a bit, then it suddenly becomes much clearer red and yellow, and you’re also getting a little less color blending here. You’re getting more dots of red and dots of yellow. So it’s not quite as blend-y with the increased value contrast between the two.
[00:33:38.360] – Tien
Color and weave. I have an example of color and weave here. No, not here. Here. Here you can see that there are three threads each of gold alternating with three threads each of red, here. I think this is a variation on Hound’s Tooth. Then here you have three threads of red alternating with three threads of yellow. That gives the illusion of areas of solid color, which is valuable because it functions very similarly to a separating draft.
[00:34:18.060] – Tien
Even though this is a 2/2 twill, which does not actually really separate colors, the fact that you’ve got the stripes is creating large chunks of yellow and large chunks of red. This is a useful thing to do when you–partly on four shafts because it can be difficult to get a true separating draft on four shafts. But it’s also useful whenever you want to create large patches of pure color as opposed to color patches of mixes. So for example, if I were doing twill blocks or something like that, I would get some areas of 1/3 twill and some areas of 3/1 twill, and those would be mostly still colors in the palette. But if you want the pure colors of the palette, color and weave is a great way of doing it.
[00:35:12.650] – Tien
So if I were to change this a little bit to four threads, you’d see a Hound’s Tooth, which is a pretty familiar structure for a lot of people. Let me Copy/Paste. Just add some in here. And more over, Copy/Paste. And Paste in here. Now you’re seeing Hound’s Tooth, which has larger sections of color than this diagonal here. But they both have pretty pure-looking patches of colors to keep your palette clean.
[00:36:09.010] – Tien
Debbie is asking, what is color and weave? There’s not a formal definition as far as I know, or not an official definition in the references. But basically, it’s what happens when you take a color pattern and combine it with a draft pattern to create something that doesn’t look like the original woven pattern. Do you have a better way of defining it, Janet? No. Okay.
[00:36:40.200] – Janet
Like you said, there isn’t really a–yeah, the visual does not match the structure.
[00:36:48.450] – Tien
Right.
[00:36:51.330] – Dawn
I just googled it and it says, one, the careful placement of the colors in warp and weft to actually create the visual pattern.
[00:36:58.950] – Tien
There you go.
[00:36:59.750] – Janet
But that’s true of–
[00:37:02.540] – Dawn
It doesn’t say a lot.
[00:37:04.180] – Tien
Well, I think the distinction is that it produces something that I would say is kind of unexpected.
[00:37:11.870] – Janet
Yeah. And then the pattern that you’re seeing doesn’t match the way the threads themselves go quite.
[00:37:20.560] – Tien
Right. So if you were to do this–so for example, here, if you were to do this section in blue and white, just solid colors, you would see that this is really just 2/2 twill. We’re just messing around with the stripes of color to create patterns that do not look like 2/2 twill.
[00:37:44.250] – Tien
So Shadow Weave is another example of color and weave. So color and weave doesn’t always produce areas of solid color, but it can. So if we go to Handweaving.net–that’s not what I wanted. Let’s go to Drafts, Tag. So if you go to– I’m on Handweaving.net looking at their giant drafts collection. But you can see here how–some of these are not color and weave either. Kris relies on people to tag things that are actually color and weave.
[00:38:28.120] – Tien
But for example, this here is, I think, a shadow weave. And if you take a look at it in Tools, Draft Editor, Colors, and get rid of those lines. If you were to look at this in a solid color warp and weft, you would see that this is pretty close to a 2/2 twill. Or it’s a 2/2 twill with some slight variations in the threading. But again, it can look like this, and that’s an optical illusion created by the alternating colors.
[00:39:13.390] – Tien
Usually, color and weave also has a very regular alternation of colors. Here you’re alternating one thread by one thread. In other cases, you might do three threads by three threads or three threads by two threads. But that’s different from doing distinctive stripes of color, like the ones here. Let’s see. Okay, where were we? We were talking about separating drafts, and I did that.
[00:39:52.270] – Tien
Let’s talk about using the final one. This is a kind of subtle one. But if you’re using just one color in both warp and weft, you’re minimizing the areas of mixed color. And in general, the eye is attracted to saturated colors and not to less saturated colors, duller colors. And as a result, if you are looking at a thing that is a mix of saturated and duller colors, it may wind up feeling like it’s brightly colored, even if it’s mostly not, because your eyes are focusing on the saturated areas and not so much on the non-saturated areas.
[00:40:40.590] – Tien
This is about 50/50 reds and greens and about 50/50 these browns, but it looks still like red and green because of that tendency to pay attention to the red and to pay attention to the green, but not to pay attention to the browns.
[00:41:07.190] – Tien
Now, if you go a little further with that and make that more of a red, mostly red, now you’re having much larger areas of saturated color. And so the eye will pick out the solid green because there’s good contrast, and it will pick out the reds. And so this over here looks overall more saturated in color than this over here. Let’s see. That was my demo in 2/2 twill.
[00:41:45.150] – Tien
Now, again, depending on what colors you’re using, this can be like with Hanukkah. Hanukkah kind of cheats a little bit by using blue and a neutral color. White is a neutral color. So here you don’t really have to worry about it because the two colors are mixing into another blue. And so the brighter blue catches the eye, but you’re not really reducing the saturation of it much. You’re just adding–because the colors aren’t blending a whole lot, and if they do blend, they lose minimum saturation. As opposed to red and green blending into brown, this just blends into a slightly lighter blue.
[00:42:39.850] – Tien
And the same thing goes for Lunar New Year. Let’s do this. You get a little more blending with Lunar New Year because, again, there isn’t as big a value difference as there is with white and blue. And where it does blend, it blends into an orange-y color, which is not quite in the palette. But because the Lunar New Year, red is an orange-y red, it winds up working okay to throw in another orange-y red.
[00:43:20.580] – Tien
I just wanted to talk very briefly about some of the specific palettes. First, Beth asks, is there a magic program that switches a pattern or tie-up to a blended or separated draft? Unfortunately, there is not. I picked that particular example because it does happen to–where is it? Yeah. This one I created basically because it is–I’m going out on a limb here. Janet, tell me if I’m wrong.
[00:43:54.460] – Tien
But because it’s a twill, you get a little more leeway, and because it’s mostly straight twill. You get a little more leeway in that changing the tie-up will change how much separation there is between the colors without getting you into a ton of trouble. This is mostly runs of straight with some points.
[00:44:16.530] – Tien
Here is where you might run into trouble if you’re changing the tie-up because you’ve got areas where it’s advancing. But if you have runs of four threads, you might wind up with some fairly long floats, which is actually true in this case here.
[00:44:33.690] – Tien
Over here, I changed the tie-up to produce a lot of plain weave. And here I’ve got a tie-up that’s in between. And so this works too with twills sometimes, if you don’t have too many small alternations that get thrown off by long floats in the tie-up or long stretches of white or black in the tie-up, but it doesn’t work for everything. Janet, you are better at this.
[00:45:04.110] – Janet
In a twill, as long as the little peaks and valleys in your threading are taller than the sort of solid areas of black or white in your tie-up. So if you zoom back in, yeah. So the tie-up on the first eight treadles there, Tien’s got floats that go across five shafts at a time. So if she has any little up and down zig-zags in her threading that are shorter than five shafts–or six shafts tall, she’s going to wind up with long floats there. And that is, in fact, the case. If I turn on the lines, you’ll see there’s long floats in that top one.
[00:45:46.310] – Tien
Right. Thank you. If you’re using something that’s more complex, then it really–here, if you change the tie-up at all, your design starts to kind of go all wonky. So you can’t do it with all drafts and with twill, what Janet said.
[00:46:12.140] – Tien
So I wanted to talk about the specific colors for each palette and how they behave. So with Christmas and Yule, the two colors, it’s primarily red and green, and silver, gold, and white are kind of the secondary colors. And the dominant thing to keep in mind about Christmas and Yule, the green and red, is that when you add them together, you get brown. And they also mix very well because they’re–Christmas red and Christmas green are almost exactly the same value. So avoiding color mixing becomes super important.
[00:46:56.680] – Tien
And if you want to get a clearly visible pattern, you either need to play tricks with value, like I’ve done here, or you need to invoke some of the other colors. So for example, if I were to get rid of this gold, you can see how suddenly the design doesn’t show as clearly as it does in the areas where I’ve divided the two with the gold.
[00:47:33.590] – Tien
If I wanted more value contrast throughout, I could use a much darker color, like the black that I’ve got. Or I could also use a lighter color, like the gold. But either way, it does a lot better if you have strong value contrast in terms of having a clearly visible design. Here, you don’t have a lot of value contrast, and it feels not quite fully focused. In the other areas, generally, you do have more value contrast and it feels a little more focused. So that’s another thing to keep in mind.
[00:48:07.630] – Tien
Let’s see. Christmas and Yule, that palette, the green, red, silver, gold, and white, and particularly the need to keep green and red predominant, really makes this palette a real challenge to work with, which is why you see so many people making unintentionally brown towels. Of the three palettes, this is by far the most challenging to work with.
[00:48:37.190] – Tien
With Hanukkah, because the white and dark blue are the main colors, and you include silver and sometimes gold as secondary colors, the blue and the white really don’t mix much because they’ve got that strong value contrast, like we saw with this design. This is not a design that intrinsically has a ton of contrast, so let’s put that back to blue and white. Let’s mosey on over here and shrink it down a little. Oops. Oh, I see the problem. I need to move this way. Okay.
[00:49:19.280] – Tien
So if we do this, then we have a pretty clear pattern because, again, the colors don’t mix much and have high value contrast. The other thing is that where they are blending, they’re blending into a lighter blue, which is still sort of within the palette. So the Hanukkah colors are probably the easiest of all these holidays to work with.
[00:49:45.500] – Tien
The main thing–or I’m not sure it even counts as an issue, but blue and white don’t have much tension to them in terms of hue contrast. So you’ve got–where was I? Oh, yeah. So you’ve got this very clean white and blue. But if you want a little more–I need to click Done Replacing Colors first. But if you want a little bit more excitement in the piece, what you can do is add a little bit of gold, which is not part of the traditional palette, but which I see a lot in Hanukkah decorations anyway. Come on. I will get this. There we go. Let’s see. Well, let’s ignore the fact that it’s doing weird things with the pattern.
[00:50:48.680] – Tien
But you can see how this has a little bit more excitement than just the pure white. That’s because you’ve added yellow, which is the color wheel opposite of blue. So it has a little more hue contrast, as well.
[00:51:05.660] – Tien
But by and large, these colors blend nicely when they do blend, and they are different enough in value that you don’t run into a ton of trouble with them blending when you don’t want them to. So with Hanukkah, you can get away with some drafts that are a little more towards blending drafts. You can also see the pattern pretty clearly most of the time without invoking other colors.
[00:51:28.900] – Tien
And then with Lunar New Year, it’s an interesting example because you have a case where you do actually stay within the palette, kind of, or mostly, by mixing the colors. Because when you mix red and yellow, typically what you get is either distinct areas of red, distinct areas of yellow if you’re using a thick yarn, or else you get a reddish-orange if you’re using a very fine yarn. And those all fall kind of within the acceptable range of the palette.
[00:52:02.670] – Tien
So it’s also easy to work with. You can get clear pattern because there is value contrast between that red and the yellow. And the colors will mix gracefully if they mix at all.
[00:52:17.840] – Tien
So the main thing to keep in mind with Lunar New Year is that the tradition is predominantly red with yellow figure and highlights, and that’s because red is the good luck color. And yellow also symbolizes, if I remember right, both power, because the emperor’s color was power, and wealth, because, well, gold.
[00:52:45.390] – Tien
The only thing you have to watch out for is that yellow is yellow, and given a chance, it will take over. So, for example, if you were to reverse the yellow and the red–let me pick a third color. Color, Replace Colors. If I were to swap the red and the yellow–and we’ll make this red and this yellow–you see how you are seeing–the yellow is starting to take over.
[00:53:21.100] – Tien
That’s another thing to keep in mind when you’re designing with it. Yellow is a super assertive color. Red ain’t bad either. But when it comes to catching the eye, yellow is really kind of the main–it’s kind of the dominatrix of–oh, boy, that’s an image. But it’s basically the dominatrix of all the colors. If you give it a chance, it will assert itself and take over. So that’s the other thing you want to keep in mind for Lunar New Year palette.
[00:53:54.710] – Tien
I see we’ve got five minutes left. Does anyone have questions?
[00:53:58.900] – Dawn
Beth says, darn, no magic bullet, but thanks for your answer. Joy had a light bulb moment on the how to figure out floats. So now she knows.
[00:54:14.730] – Tien
Yay.
[00:54:15.680] – Dawn
Yay. There are no other questions right now, but come on, folks, you got a couple of minutes.
[00:54:21.760] – Tien
Yep.
[00:54:24.030] – Dawn
Anyone? Anyone?
[00:54:25.920] – Tien
I have a paranoid cat.
[00:54:37.760] – Dawn
Not a single question. Let’s see.
[00:55:02.040] – Tien
It’s fine. I think you may have been hearing the back chatter where Fritz has disappeared.
[00:55:13.850] – Janet
Do we need a cat? I could probably acquire a cat.
[00:55:17.400] – Tien
You should acquire a cat.
[00:55:18.730] – Janet
Okay, I’ll go looking.
[00:55:20.610] – Tien
Oh, I found him.
[00:55:22.570] – Janet
Okay.
[00:55:24.850] – Dawn
We have a couple of questions.
[00:55:26.010] – Janet
[inaudible 00:55:26] directly behind you.
[00:55:28.680] – Dawn
Well, Tien opened the door earlier, so of course, the cat went away. Debbie West is asking, can you talk about the best reed for 18 ends per inch with a 12- or 15-dent reed? I guess she’s asking about denting for 18 EPI with a 12 or 15.
[00:55:49.330] – Janet
Okay. Sorry.
[00:55:51.450] – Tien
Go ahead.
[00:55:52.890] – Janet
Shall I answer that one?
[00:55:55.470] – Tien
Sure.
[00:55:56.600] – Janet
Okay. I’m going–let me just one gifer while I–am I sharing my screen already?
[00:56:07.390] – Tien
No.
[00:56:08.270] – Janet
Oh, okay. All right. Here we go. So ignore that black line at the top of the screen. That’s not usually there. But if you go to the Tools and Calculators and you go down to the Sett Calculator, which is here. No, wrong thing. Sorry. Go back. Go back. The Denting Calculator. More Online Calculators. It’s currently the first thing on that list, Denting or Sleying Calculator.
[00:56:53.230] – Janet
So there’s a lot of exposition about how it all works, but you can also skip straight to the–well, the calculator is right here at the top. So if you want to get 18 ends per inch and your reed has 12, then the denting plan is to dent it 1, then 2, then 1, then 2, then 1, then 2, then 1, then 2 across. If you have a 15-dent reed, then it’s more complicated. 1, 1, 1, 1–four 1’s, then a 2, four 1’s, then a 2, four 1’s, then a 2.
[00:57:22.930] – Janet
In my opinion, this is going to give you the more even appearance in your cloth because it’s more consistently distributed. And the 1’s and 2’s aren’t–this is not the best way to say it, but they’re not as far apart.
[00:57:42.160] – Janet
If we went back to the 15, this is going to be every fifth dent has an extra end in it, which might, depending on your fiber, look like you’ve got little pinstripes, where every fifth dent is a little bit thicker. And it also means that in the majority of your cloth, you’re really just going to have one end per dent, so it’ll be closer to 15 EPI than 18. So I usually go for the option that gives me the fewest components in the pattern so that it’s more evenly sleyed across the whole thing. Does that make sense?
[00:58:22.570] – Dawn
Debbie says that’s what she wanted to know, so thank you.
[00:58:26.120] – Janet
You’re welcome.
[00:58:27.280] – Dawn
Cass asks, is that denting calculator applicable to the rigid heddle loom?
[00:58:33.610] – Janet
Well, except–no, because with a rigid heddle, you’re stuck with eyes and slots, and you can’t–yes, in theory, you could put one thread in an eye, then two in the slot, then one in the eye, then two in the slot, then one in the eye, then two in the slot. But we know that just putting two threads in a slot, that means they’re threaded together as well as being sleyed together. So they will move together in the cloth. So it has a different impact, as Carly has talked about in some of her–what it’s doing–yes, it changes your density, but it’s also affecting your threading because the heddle does both those jobs on a rigid heddle. The tasks are separated between different pieces of equipment on a floor loom–or a shaft loom.
[00:59:30.280] – Dawn
Great. Also from Cass, we should do this holiday weaving thing for every holiday.
[00:59:36.220] – Janet
Yeah. Tien and I looked up palettes for lots of different holidays, and it’s funny how many holidays don’t really have a palette. And then a lot of other holidays have overlapping palettes, or they have, like, 11-ty billion colors in the palette. Like a palette for–what was it?
[00:59:57.930] – Tien
Diwali.
[00:59:58.650] – Janet
Diwali, yeah. But we can certainly do it. We’ll do them seasonally. And somebody else had suggested a course on the same thing, but for the seasons of the year. And that’s a fabulous idea that we have put on the list.
[01:00:14.470] – Tien
Cass says, Chinese New Year next. Actually, Chinese New Year and Lunar New Year are functionally the same thing, except that Lunar New Year includes all the cultures that aren’t Chinese. So yeah. Okay. We are at two minutes past the hour, and we are out of questions.
[01:00:33.800] – Janet
Dayamitra has a cat.
[01:00:36.500] – Tien
That’s awesome. We should have one webinar that’s just all cats.
[01:00:41.320] – Janet
Or we could all do the thing where you replace your picture with a cat, like that lawyer.
[01:00:47.910]
[LAUGHER]
[01:00:50.470] – Janet
Okay.
[01:00:53.570] – Tien
But anyway.
[01:00:54.190] – Janet
we’ve gotten silly, so we better sign off.
[01:00:57.650] – Tien
Bye, everyone.
[01:00:58.400] – Janet
Bye.