Category Archives: knitting

Interlaced Color in Textiles

wool scarves by Wallace # Sewell

PLIED COLOR

In the world of constructed textiles, solid color is only truly possible when all of the yarns constructing a cloth are of the identical hue.  Even then, color is still modulated by surface texture, light and shadow.  The genius of constructing textiles with multiple threads of varied colors, plied or woven together, is endlessly subtle and rewarding to close inspection.  Plying color shatters hues like a kaleidoscope, bringing one or another color to the surface unexpectedly, creating secondary patterns in its random wake.

Like pointillism, color theory applies:  the eye will optically mix red and white to get pink; red & green to get brown.
 
This twisted color is satisfying as a layered experience: the softened haze of the textile surface from a distance gradually focuses into a world of intricate subtlety.  The surprise discovery that a soft earth tone is made up of complements is a rich reward.
wool and cashmere tippet by Wallace  #  Sewell

WOVEN COLOR

 
Warp crosses weft, weft crosses warp.  Warps of varied colors cross wefts of varied colors.  A tiny pixelated color grid emerges, bold like a tartan or a subtle ombre blend. Occasional blocks of one pure hue emerge when a color crosses itself; when one set of threads is so dense it hides the crossing set, the colors can appear totally solid.  When the threads are twisted together in the fringes, the color shatters like a prism.  When threads weave together at right angles, each intersection might be thought of as the equivalent of a pixel.
Combinations of dark and light, saturated and neutral, break up surfaces.  Plying colors of similar values give a more cohesive effect.
 
 
(top) Wallace + Sewell wool and cashmere shawl. Photo courtesy Wallace + Sewell; (bottom) wool and cashmere tippet by Wallace  +  Sewell,  wool and silk scarf, Margo Selby; from  Santa Fe Weaving Gallery

KNIT COLOR

Knit consists of a single thread, looping its way through the air, back & forth in straight lines, until a fabric is constructed.  Linear in quality, the lines of color can be broken up by using threads of several hues, plied together.  Color can be swapped out in the midst for a change.  Solid colors appear more saturated against a ground of plied colors.  The pop of saturated intarsia color against a ground of finely twisted threads gives a satisfying lesson in color addition, subtraction, and multiplication.

 
 
(Top & Bottom), knit scarves by Catherine Andre Paris, from Santa Fe Weaving Gallery)
CROCHET COLOR
 

Crochet is made by pulling loops through loops until a construction holds.  The progress can go linear, back and forth, until fabric is constructed, but it can also go round and round, and be added onto at whim in a non-linear fashion.  Threads can be twisted together prior to construction, or changed out during construction.  One can start with a palette of limited colors and by randomly recombining achieve a great diversity and subtlety of hues.  

When color is not subjected to the geometry of linear structure, it can develop and mass more freely.  Rings of varied hues can be crisp or soft depending on the combining and recombining of a relatively limited palette. 

 
crochet scarves by Sophie Digard, Paris.