A New Spin on Color

72 Pages·2016·199.918 MB·English

by  Alanna Wilcox

A New Spin
Have you ever tried spinning
painted top or rovings only to
be disappointed with the color
outcomes in your yarns or
finished projects? on Color
Alanna Wilcox will clearly and artfully walk
you through understanding color theory
making it less intimidating for both novice
and expert spinners alike.
Never before has a book presented
the same dyed top worked up into 20+
different approaches accompanied by
easy to follow directions so you can see
how the techniques look in a skein and
a knitted swatch. Plus there are photos
of finished products accompanying the
techniques to make envisioning the
spinning application even easier.
After reading this book you will be
inspired to delve into your stash with
a new eye and excitement for color
in your spinning.
Alanna Wilcox
Book design by Alice Hallahan-Soltiz

Copy edited by Dori Penny & Meg Weglarz

Cover photography & interior photography by
Jessica LK Photography except where noted.

Text and illustrations © 2017 by Alanna Wilcox

All rights reserved. No part of this book may
be reproduced without written permission
from the author. All images in this book have
been reproduced with the knowledge and prior
consent from the photographers concerned.

Self published
Rochester, NY

AlannaWilcox.com

Printed in Rochester, NY

ISBN print edition: 978-0-9990328-0-0
ISBN digital edition: 978-0-9990328-1-7
Alanna Wilcox
This book has been a labor of love and took over 4
years to complete, but it was the help of my family Table of
93 Chapter 5: Blended
and friends that made it possible.
& Muted Yarns
Contents

I would like to thank the people that had a hand in
bringing my creative vision to life: Jessica for your 126 Conclusion
amazing photographs, Dori and Meg for helping 126 Spinner to spinner challenge
my voice be clear and concise, and to Alice who
magnificently pieced it all together. 5 Introduction
127 Appendices

127 A. How to make a crochet
I would like to thank the spinning community that
8 Chapter 1: Color Theory chain with painted top
has encouraged me to pursue my Master Spinner
9 Color mixing 130 B. Creating a solid join
certificate, the bulk of which this book is based upon.
13 Color planning for a project 131 C. Making a tensioned
Thank you to Deb for sharing with me the magical
lazy kate
art of turning fiber into yarn, Edy for fielding every
133 D. Finishing your
question I had with patience and grace, and all my 29 Chapter 2: Preparation
handspun yarns
friends that kept cheering me on, encouraging me
& Spinning Mechanics
with their words and feedback.
35 How to approach a top
135 Glossary
37 Influence of color spacing
Lastly I would like to thank my husband Greg. He has 135-7 Definitions of terms
45 Spinning & plying techniques
been an amazing support system in my life and his
love, dedication, and patience with me while I worked
138 References
on this project has been beyond anything I could have 57 Chapter 3: Solid &
hoped for.
Crisp Colors
140 About the author
Thank you for reading this book, I hope you find it
77 Chapter 4: Barber Pole
inspiring and look at color in a new way!
& Heathered Yarns 141 Recommended dyers
Introduction
When I first started spinning I was drawn to the tactile experience of turning fiber into yarn, the
process mesmerized me and when I began spinning multicolored tops, it was an added bonus
to watch the colors change from beginning to end. As a beginning spinner my only plan was to
make a continuous yarn. As I gained more experience and became more skilled at spinning, I
started to plan out projects for my handspun yarns with color in mind. I would buy gorgeous
colored tops, spin pounds for projects, knit the yarn up and … be disappointed within the first
few rows.
Something happened to the colors when the dyed top went through my fingers onto the
bobbin, wrapped around the knitting needles, and turned into fabric. I wasn’t sure what or how
it happened, I just knew the colors changed and something got lost in the translation from fiber
to yarn to fabric. Sometimes I would get barber pole looking yarns that seemed too busy. Other
times colors would pool together in unflattering bands of color. I was frustrated because I’d
seen projects online that had glorious color combinations and I coveted them. How did other
spinners get these pleasing color palettes? How did they spin their yarn to intentionally capture
beautiful color?
These questions led me to experiment and explore spinning for color with hand painted tops.
I wanted to see how many ways were feasible to spin a hand painted top with color in mind.
How many color combinations could I get from one top? How would these yarns look knitted
up? What if I changed the stitches used; how would that impact the color? My Scarf Sampler,
pictured right, grew out of my exploration of all these variables that piqued my curiosity.
On a trip to the NYS Sheep and Wool Festival in Rhinebeck, NY, I saw a hand painted top
peeking out on a shelf that I had to have. The colors spoke to me. I had no clue what I would
do with it or how I would spin it but the colorway was gorgeous, like a tropical sunset. The
problem though, was that I am not one to wear tropical colors. I couldn’t for the life of me figure
out what I was going to make with the top, still, I could not resist purchasing it. Since I had no
plan for the beautiful top, I decided to offer it up to experimentation and sampling with hopes of
discovering what it was meant to be. I used the majority of the painted top to create the Scarf
Sampler and each color section was done using one entire color repeat within the painted top.
The process of spinning the top multiple ways and creating the scarf led me to develop
a workshop on spinning hand painted tops. The experience of spinning one top using
different approaches taught me how influential spinning choices are in the way colors present
themselves in the final yarn. It also became clear the role fabric construction plays in whether
the painted top will look like a beauty or a beast in the final end use of one’s yarn.
I hope this book gives you inspiration to revisit your stash of hand painted tops with a renewed
sense of creativity and a new, enthusiastic eye for color and that you will use the information
and tools presented here to create yarns and projects that you envision from those tops.
5 A New Spin on Color
Chapter One:

Color Theory
Each fiber artist may have different comfort Using a color wheel can be a very helpful
levels when it comes to selecting and tool when beginning to plan a project. It can
working with colors... Some spinners find help you observe color relationships and aid
that picking colors to work with can be a with the selection of color pairings for your
daunting task; they would rather someone next project.
else create a pleasing color palette for them;
so they can just sit down and spin something To start with, there are the base colors known
pretty. Others tend to find themselves in a as the primary colors. There are different
color rut, where their stash contains mostly sets of primary colors depending on the color
one or two favorite colors with a few other palette the artist is using. The palette that
extras as accents. A third group of spinners most of us are familiar with is the painter’s
have a brilliant color sense and seem to just palette, or red, blue and warm yellow. The
naturally “know” which colors work together, other primary color palette when mixing
often pairing seemingly unlikely colors to get pigments is called the printer’s palette
awe inspiring results. consisting of magenta, cyan and cool yellow.
The painter’s palette and printer’s palette,
Those spinners that have a good color sense along with black and white, can be used
use the principles behind color theory to together to create unlimited colors.
help them construct visually pleasing color
palettes, whether they do so consciously When two primaries are mixed together they
or not. Sometimes it may seem as though create secondary colors; blue and yellow
serendipity makes a painted top project mixed together makes green; red and yellow
work out and yet other times, high hopes mixed makes orange; and blue and red mixed
and great potential turn to mud in the blink makes violet.
of an eye. Understanding basic color theory
can help you achieve color combinations To create the remaining colors on the wheel,
that will look beautiful in the tops used to the intermediate colors, a primary and a
spin your yarns as well as in the end product, secondary color are mixed together. For
whether knitting, weaving, crocheting, example, to mix the color to the left of red
embroidery or some other end use. on the color wheel equal parts of red and
violet are mixed together to create the color
There is nothing more frustrating to me than red-violet.
spending hours to spin a gorgeous hand
painted top, only to realize in the first five
minutes of knitting I don’t like how the colors
look! I believe there is a great benefit in
sampling but it’s also important to know
how a spinning technique will influence the
Color wheel Printer’s Printer’s Secondary
color in the yarn and that knowledge can
Primary Primary colors
help direct one’s sampling path. RYB CMY
Chapter 1: Color Theory 8
1 yellow &
blue singles
Color Mixing
Two additional influential properties
As a spinner, you have total control over when and
that all colors have are a color’s
how color mixing can take place in your yarns. If for
temperature and value. If I said to
example you wanted to spin a green yarn you could
imagine the color green, you might
pick from one of the following ways:
envision a grassy green or a clover 2 marled
green. The beauty of color is that
• Buy green fiber (or dye it yourself) and spin it up.
there are so many different variations
of green. There are drab greens like
• Spin white fiber and dye the yarn green.
khaki, bright ones like neon green,
and a plethora of others like sea
• Spin a single of yellow and a single of blue to have
foam, emerald, pine, etc. While all of
them mix visually in the plied yarn.
the colors above might fall into the
3 carded
category of “Green” as a color, their
• Card or comb together yellow and blue fiber to give 1x
values, or the lightness or darkness
it a heathered green appearance.
of the colors, are different and so are
their temperatures. Color temperature
For samples 1-6, white wool was dyed yellow and blue
refers to the physical or emotional
separately. For sample 7, 50% yellow and 50% blue
feeling a color has. Warmer colors
dye were mixed together to dye the wool green. All
are like those found in fire, reds,
samples used the same blue/yellow dye.
oranges, and yellows and cool colors 4 carded
2x
are the ones we associate with ice
Each sample consisted of 10
and shadows such as purple, blue
grams of wool, with 50% yellow
and green. Green, being a secondary
fiber and 50% blue fiber. Even
color created by mixing a warm color
though each example has the
(yellow) and a cool color (blue), can
same ratio of yellow to blue
be pushed in either color temperature
within it, how each sample
direction. If a green has more yellow
was prepared and spun
in it our eye will perceive it to be 5 carded
influenced the final color. 3x
“warmer” and it will come forward to
our eyes but if mixed with more blue
it will appear to be a “cooler” green
and recede. By understanding these
subtle nuances of a color it can
help you figure out why some color
palettes appeal to us more often 6 carded
than others, why some colors work 5x
better in a color scheme than others,
and how to approach spinning with
desired color outcomes in mind.
7 wool dyed
green
9 A New Spin on Color
Since there are several options to go about spinning a done inconsistently by zigzagging back and forth
green yarn, knowing how each of those options would between the colors, the resulting yarn will have
look in a given end use will further help to guide the blocks of one color and then blocks of the other.
creation process. This is also known as a marled yarn. (Sample 2)
• The first option of spinning white fiber and dyeing • The fourth option further builds upon the second
the resulting yarn green is the simplest approach to yarn’s properties of optical color mixing. When you
1
achieve a solid color; it will yield the crispest, clearest card or comb two separately dyed tops together
color results. Similar results can be achieved when it makes the solid dyed fibers sit closer together
dyeing the fiber first and then spinning it. (Sample 7) within the singles. Having the yellow and blue
fibers closer together makes it difficult for our eyes
• The second option, a to differentiate between the individual strands of
single of blue and a single colored fibers; therefore, the overall color of the
2
of yellow, plied together yarn appears more homogeneous. Colored fibers
will produce a very high blended in this manner result in either a heathered
contrast color pairing or more solid looking color depending on the
within the yarn, but at a number of times the fiber is blended. (Samples 3-6)
distance the colors would mix optically. This is a style
3 of color mixing very similar to pointillism in art, where • Lastly, my favorite way of color blending, and the
the colors remain pure but the eye mixes them focus of this book, is how to spin a painted top
together such as in the Seurat painting pictured. that is dyed first and then spun into a yarn with
multiple colors. The beauty of this method is that it
4
• The third option, holding two different colors has the potential to combine all three of the above-
together while spinning, blends the colors as you mentioned approaches while also lending itself to
draft. If done with a consistent drafting technique nuances of color blending that can only be achieved
the singles will have an equal balance of color. If when spinning a yarn from a hand painted top.
5
Hand painted tops give you the most amount of choices when approaching spinning for color in your yarns. I think
that is why they are so popular. We are attracted to color; picking out a hand-painted top is like a child selecting a
color from a brand new box of crayons. There is a joy and exuberance about playing with color that can’t be put
into words. Unfortunately, just like that new crayon that gets dumped into a bucket and gets dirty from all of the
6
other colors mixing with it and muddying its colors, our yarns come off of the wheel and somehow lose the appeal
they had when they were in the painted top form. Why were we so attracted to the colors in the top but the yarn’s
colors fall short? Or, even worse, we love the colors in the painted top; we love the color in the yarns, but when
the yarn is knitted or woven the color combinations look garish or muddy. Understanding the characteristics of
the colors in painted tops and how our spinning and fabric construction techniques alter those colors can help us
7 control the colors in all stages of production.
Ultimately, there is no right or wrong way to approach spinning a painted top. When you have more than one color
in a painted top you can make choices about where the colors go and in what order they go. You do not have to
spin the colors in the hand painted top the way the artist dyed them! You can group colors based on their
value, or lightness and darkness, you can group them into cool colors and warm colors, and you can group them
based on percentages within the top by having a majority color and accent colors. Really, the possibilities and
combinations are endless.
Chapter 1: Color Theory 12
Color Planning for a Project
Spacing of color in the top
Color can be a very personal element when it comes to spinning and
creating. We all have favorite colors that we gravitate towards when we Considering how the colors are
spin, just as we each have some colors that look better on us than others. arranged and spaced out in the painted
Selecting the right colors to use for a project can be equally as important top determines the way the colors will
as deciding what fibers to spin. If you make the effort to plan ahead, you look in the yarn and fabric.
are more apt to get results that visually please you. There is definitely
a serendipity in sitting down and spinning a painted top to see what When spinning for end use, consider
happens, but if you’re not getting the color in the fabric you want, then these questions with regard to the
there are things that can be done at the planning stage that can help spacing of the colors within the top.
alter the final outcome.
If you are spinning for garments or projects that you want to wear,
How is the top painted?
sometimes there can be a disconnect between what colors we
Are there clear blocks of color that
like to spin versus what colors we like to wear. I tend to gravitate
are equal to or longer than the staple
toward green and teal when I spin fiber, yet I wear neutral colors
length of the fibers within the top or is
like black, brown and grey. If you are spinning for something you
it a splotchy/spotted color application?
will want to wear consider what colors show up more frequently
in your wardrobe rather than picking something that catches your
eye for a project. If you tend to wear neutrals but love spinning
bright colors chances are you might be disappointed with a neon
pink sweater. The beauty about color is that there are ways to
make the neon pink less bright by understanding how to neutralize
it and therefore be more apt to wear the sweater. You can also
consider the neon pink yarn as an accent in the sweater and use
a neutral commercial yarn for the bulk of the sweater too.
There are two factors that influence the color outcome when spinning
painted top for a project.
These three tops have different
spacing of color and that will
influence the final yarns spun from
Understanding and applying color theory
them. From left to right: splotchy/
This helps when planning and selecting which color pairings will work random lengths of color dyed by
Pigeonroof Studios, the middle top
well together in the overall project. Refer to page 8 for more information
was dyed by FatCatKnits with color
on color theory.
bands slightly longer than a single
staple length with spotty overlapping
of colors, and the far right top has
bands of color 4 times longer than
a staple length that I dyed.
13 A New Spin on Color
What is the staple length of the fiber in
relationship to the bands of color?
If the staple length in the top is shorter than the bands
of color there will be more areas of crisp solid colors
in the yarn. Conversely, if the staple length is longer
than the bands of color in the top then the colors will
appear more heathered in the singles because of the
overlapping color on the single strands of the fibers in
that staple length.
Shorter bands of color/longer staple length of fiber.
Longer bands of color/shorter staple length
In the staple length examples pictured left, the far left top
was dyed with long color bands. The teal and grey colors
are next to one another in the top. Because of the ratio of
the length of the color bands to the length of the staple of
fiber there are: staple lengths of top that are solid grey (top)
staple lengths of top that are both teal and grey (middle)
and staple lengths of top that are solid teal (bottom). If this
top were to be spun from end to end it would result in solid
areas of teal and solid areas of grey, making the singles
more homogeneous looking. If the color bands were
shorter the yarn would appear to have a barber pole effect.
In the example of the singles on the right, the length of the
staple and length of the color band influence the look of the
singles yarn. If the staple length is shorter than the length of
the color band (like the grey/teal top example pictured left),
the singles yarn will look more like the left single.
If the length of the staple is longer than the length of the
color bands (like the rainbow top example pictured left),
then the singles spun will appear to look more like the
yarn on the right with multiple colors overlapping within
the singles.
15 A New Spin on Color Chapter 1: Color Theory 16
How long are the individual color sections and in what sequence
are they repeated, if at all?
If a top is painted blue, red, yellow, and green are the color bands equal in length? Or is one
color longer and the next color in the band shorter? If the colors do repeat, are they randomly
spaced? Or do they occur in a sequence, or a “color repeat”, such as blue-red-yellow-green-
blue-red-yellow-green or blue-red-yellow-green-yellow-red-blue?
How thick of a single will you be spinning?
The thicker the yarn that you spin from a painted top, the shorter the blending between the
bands of color will appear and the yarn will have less of an ombre, or gradual, transition
from one color to the next.
Thinner singles with color transitions Thicker singles with color transitions shorter
spread out. and abrupt.
The same colorway dyed with differently spaced bands and sequencing will produce different colors in the final
fabric. The first, second, and fourth tops have a color-repeating pattern within them. The middle top is randomly
dyed and the last top does not repeat.
17 A New Spin on Color Chapter 1: Color Theory 18