Iridescence Workshop: Day 2

There's not as much to talk about today, just that I am very inspired and wanting to try out a few different ideas on my own. We continued weaving today and I finished my green-yellow green-yellow plaid with every other color. What I am wanting to do is weave some iridescent yardage in maybe a deep blue and brown together and then sew a dress from it. (we'll see how soon that happens...)

But we did learn one lesson: all of us who were using table looms (like the one in the picture) have sworn we'll never use one again. Take my advice, they're not worth the trouble and the weaving takes twice as long as on a floor loom. Everyone using a table loom had some sort of tension problem.


I did find a neat flicker account that had a ton of iridescent pictures that were both natural and unnatural sources. This ball was my favorite.

Color Iridescence Weaving Workshop: Day 1

One of the best things about being in the weaver's guild is that we get to have these awesome workshops a couple of times a year. Well this weekend we have weaver Bobbie Irwin giving us a workshop on creating iridescence in woven fabric by combining contrasting colors in the warp and weft.


Picture a room full of different kinds of looms all going at once. (It's pretty loud!) We've been weaving all day today after Bobbie lectured for about an hour. Each of us received a predetermined warp of 3-6 colors and everyone set up her loom beforehand. Then, we wove 3" bands of every color in the spectrum. Each two-color interaction is different. Some produce a lot of iridescence, others only a little.


Iridescence is defined by Bobbie as "a play of colors, where the apparent fabric color changes with the light and angle of view." There are also examples of this in nature, such as motor oil showing the rainbow from different angles (but really being black) or a peacock feather shimmering blue, purple and gold.


Unfortunately, I don't think my pictures show the iridescence very well, but you can get the idea of each square in our sampler being a different combination produced.


Here is Bobbie Irwin, wearing an iridescent shirt she wove. The warp is blue, the weft is fushia, and so the colors are constantly varying in the light between the two and the purple is also produced as a visual mixing.

I'll post more tomorrow. We'll be experimenting with different weave structures in one color combination. (Today we just did plain weave.)