This is one of those "you never know" stories. I teach weaving classes both at The Yarn Tree, my shop in Brooklyn, and at Habu Textiles in Manhattan. The classes run for ten weeks and as part of the beginning weaving class we meet at my shop on a Saturday afternoon and learn to dye yarn with a variety of techniques using Kool-Aid. One of my students, Judy Shepard, came to the dye class with no real interest in learning to dye, but sine it was part of what she had paid for she felt she should be there. What happened over that afternoon to Judy was quite remarkable. She fell in love with the dyeing process. When she went home she did more work with Kool-Aid and then began to explore natural dyes. Judy signed up for Intermediate Weaving and her final pieces for the show are featured here as well as Judy's own words!
From Judy Shepard...
My approach to dyeing is as follows: I select a yarn that appeals to me and make a large number of small skeins from it. I mordant a group of them together and then dye the skeins individually, experimenting with different natural dyes, alone and in various combinations. Usually I mix the colors in the dyepot (a pinch of this, a little of that, and a lot of guessing), rather than overdyeing. In this way I have accumulated a basketful of yarns in many colors. I begin with both white and light, natural-colored yarns.
Most of the yarns in these three pieces come from my basketful of yarns. The warps are the exception, they were dyed specifically for the pieces, including the multi-colored section of warp on Stripes and Blocks. Except for that section (50% silk/ 50% wool) the warp threads are silk and were dyed as warp chains.
The weft of Stripes and Blocks is silk that runs from selvedge to selvedge throughout with a wool roving used as supplemental weft. Two other pieces, For Mondrian and Into the Swamp, began as a single warp. As I was working, a severe tension problem developed and I had to cut the warp and re-tension. In both pieces, the weft yarns are from my basketful of yarns: included are wools, wool/silk blends and silks. The last section of Into the Swamp is woven with the ryijy (rya) technique and is my ode to Finland.
