How to Paint One Warp and Get Two Colors

 Last month's blog post promoted a workshop I'm teaching in April in Bucks County, PA, on how to weave a "Harriet Tubman Shawl."

Here, once again, is a photo of the scarf (as seen in last month's post). It honors the heroism of Harriet Tubman, who spent her last years in Auburn, NY,  near where I live. She was photographed at least a couple of times during those years wearing a shawl over her shoulders. I admire her greatly, as so many of us do.

If you look very closely, you'll see that the warp is painted -- but, because it's Echo, you need at least two colors in the warp. Again, looking closely, you'll see that one warp thread is painted and the next one is black. Painted/black/painted/black -- that's how the colors of the warp are arranged for my parallel threading.

Another clue about the two warp colors: Just look at the two colors 

in the twisted fringe, with a painted thread alternating with a black thread.

That's the secret to achieving two colors in your warp while painting one warp: wind a warp of natural and black threads together. Black yarn does not show the dye, so you can paint right over it.

In this case, I've wound the warp in 24/3 cotton, which is the same grist as 16/2 cotton, but I find it's a bit sturdier thread. The drawdown for this warp is 8 shafts and, while the warp count in this case was about 840 ends, the warps for the workshop will call for 400 ends. (Not many people want to wind 840 ends for a workshop, I believe.)

So here are the steps in the dyeing process. I'm actually giving away a good portion of the instructions for the warp prep in this workshop, but I enjoy the results so much I thought I'd share it. The complete directions can be found on the ProChemical and Dye website, under MX Fiber Reactive Dyes: the instructions are for warp-painting on cotton and silk. (Please note: I don't use print paste in this process, so you can ignore the step that calls for making print paste as well as the instructions for making thick dyes.)

Step 1) As you wind your warp, do not use choke ties. Instead, use twining every 18". (If you use choke ties, they will resist the dye and you'll get little white lines across your painted warp.) Of course, you will want to use a choke tie at the end of the warp, where you cut it, and at the beginning of the warp, where you secure it around the back tie-on rod. (I warp back to front.) Also, you'll want to secure the cross quite snugly. But otherwise, use twining, as you often see when you purchase a skein of yarn. Here's a photo of what twining looks like.

Step 2) Soak your warp for at least 30 minutes in a soda-ash solution, according to the directions. (This assumes that you have already scoured the warp to get rid of any oils, dirt, or sizing in the yarn.)

Step 3) Prepare the urea water. Urea basically helps the dyes to stay active longer. I use 4 cups of urea for 1 gallon of water. Make sure the urea is completely dissolved. This is your basic water solution for making your dyes.

Step 4) Put on your respirator mask and gloves. Make sure you're wearing old clothing, too.

Me rockin' my respirator mask

If the water is really hot, I use these humongous gloves. 

Otherwise, I use food-preparation gloves or the cleaning gloves 

you can get at the grocery store.

Step 5) Mix your dyes.

I alter the recipe a bit, using 1 and 1/2 teaspoon of dye powder for one cup of urea water. This gives me a medium shade that I like.

8 different colors all lined up and ready for painting.

Step 6) Paint your warp. Make sure you thoroughly saturate the threads with color -- so for me that means using 2"-wide sponge brushes and turning the warp over as I paint, so that both sides get painted. I don't follow any particular color order, just using the colors randomly. Also, I try hard (although I don't always achieve this) not to paint horizontal stripes with my dye colors. Instead, I work to paint each color at an angle on the warp, which makes the warp more interesting visually. For each color, I paint a 2-4" long swath of color, no longer than that. (Don't want the weaving to get boring.) So each of the colors is about the same length on the warp.

Step 7) Wrap the warp entirely in plastic so that none of the dye leaks out onto your floors or tabletop or any surface. One thing I do to avoid leakage is that I sop up the excess dye on the sides of the warp as I paint, using old bath towels. (This makes for some very colorful towels that I continue to use for dyeing after washing and drying them. Somehow, with no soaking in soda ash, the dyes do adhere to the cotton towels.)

Step 8) Cure the dyed warp for 24 hours in a room that is at least 70 degrees Fahrenheit. This is really important. If your room isn't warm enough, your dyes won't strike (adhere) to the yarn and you'll be rinsing and rinsing to the get color out, only to wind up with faint colors. There are many ways to achieve a temperature of 70 degrees or higher. In my case, I take the warp (rolled in plastic and then put in a plastic bag) and place it on top of my boiler in the basement, which is hotter than 70 degrees. Some folks use those grow-mats for keeping seeds warm. Others use electric blankets but somehow that makes me nervous....

Step 9) Rinse out the warp. I have two stationary tubs, so I load one plastic bucket in each tub and rinse the warp in warm (maybe 100 degrees) water until it's filled with color (and it usually is). Then I transfer the warp to the other water-filled bucket and repeat the process. I do this until the water, with the warp in the bucket, runs nearly clear. To be honest, I have yet to achieve perfectly clear water in rinsing a warp with fiber-reactive dyes. But a pale-colored water is good enough for me.

Step 10) Hang the warp to dry. Understand that, at this point, the warp will look pretty tangled. I urge you to leave it this way until it is completely dry. Tangles come out much better when the yarn is dry. What I do, when it's dry, is wind the loop at the end of the warp on a hook and walk back the entire warp until it's taught, stretching and snapping it straight as I go. Even then, there will be some tangles. These will have to be combed out as you dress your loom.

So there you have it! Two colors for the effort of painting one warp. Although I almost always use this for Echo and Jin designs, I have used the same process for a striped warp in 60/2 silk -- black stripes alternating with painted stripes -- and then woven a turned twill, going in one direction for the black stripes and the other direction for the painted stripes. The effect is always beautiful, because we all love color, don't we?

Feel free to ask any questions in the comments section. And thanks for reading!