I learnt a great lesson in this past workshop. Thank you to Renita for her bold approach to colour and for letting me in on what she was weaving!

This was Renita’s colour palette for her weaving. What would you add to lift it again?? We could use a white or yellow which would sit stark and make the stripes more apparent. But if we use a blend of colours we can start to make use of colours in quite a dynamic way.

Renita found a used bobbin from another weaver ( I’m not sure who! and please own up) in my flag weaving pile. She then wove it into the mix and it provided a dynamic colour lift to the weave.

One of the colours was a hi-vis fluro orange, the other a bright pink. So very strong colours against the original palette. Not colours most would automatically think “yes that goes well together”. But they did perform a magical trick.

This is the result within the woven piece. I don’t think my photography is doing it full justice.

This reminds me that there are surely no ugly or even overpowering colours. They just have to be worked into the woven cloth in a way that makes them shine, or at least makes them useful. Both the pink and orange yarns are very fine cottons and that’s why it’s good to have a supply of very fine yarns because they can be blended together so effectively to create a better range of colours than flat ones.

Also there are other factors in the cloth that make this particular mix work. It is a black warp and the warp sett is such that it allows more of the weft colouring to take a more assertive role. If you are weaving with balanced weaves in a more conventional set up Tien Chiu has set up a colour mixer for weavers which offers a quick idea of how colours mix within the warp and weft when it is a more balanced sett. For example, I once wove a shadow weave design with a purple warp and yellow weft. The resulting cloth was a dynamic brown shade but with details of its colours on close inspection. Be bold. I say this to myself as I just want to desperately stay within the same colour range and not use such complementary colours.

Now I’m looking at my fluro green. Always learning. One of the tenets of Saori weaving is translated by some ‘to be bold and adventurous‘ and Renita did this without worrying about that hi-vis orange.