I’ve had the luxury of studio time this fall and have been working since November to set up the “Mother” loom, my 56″ 16H (but currently only using 8H). This is a long, labor intensive process that begins with winding two warps – one is the ground warp and the other is the supplementary warp. The warps for this new series of art works is 49″ wide by 9 yards long, 24 epi for the ground warp and 12 epi for the supplementary warp.Next I want to test how this warp thread will dye, so I wind small skeins to test color mix and intensity. This is all done by weight ratio, so I use a scale and a calculator to figure out how much dye for each skein. I also keep track of each dye bath, saving a small piece for my records.Once I am satisfied with the color I dye the warps, usually only putting one warp at a time in a bucket. This allows me to make sure that the dye is applied evenly to all the warp ends.
In my next post, I’ll share how I wind long and wide warps on my loom.