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Color is humanity’s strongest visual sense, and people have one of the most sensitive color vision systems on the planet. It is estimated that we can see anywhere from 1 million to 10 million distinct colors. No wonder selecting yarns for a project can feel so daunting!
As the second article in a three-part series on Color-and-Weave and Shadow Weave, this article discusses key concepts to keep in mind when selecting yarn for such projects. For more information on the color theory behind this article, please see this series.
Contrast controls how strongly Color-and-Weave patterns show up in the cloth. The three types of contrast are value (a color’s relative lightness or darkness), hue (the color itself), and saturation (the color’s intensity). Generally speaking, a Color-and-Weave pattern will be more striking when the value contrast is stronger, and it will be more visually interesting when it has additional contrast in hue and/or saturation.
The first and most important type of contrast to understand is value contrast. The highest value contrast pair of colors are pure black and pure white, and all colors sit somewhere between the two on a greyscale. You can see how “dark” or “light" a color is by converting a color photo to monochrome, such as with these images of Array Meadow.
High value contrast patterns, such as the blue and white draft, are bold and have strong definition, which may be desired for smaller projects, while the lower value contrast of the blue and grey draft may be more appealing for larger fabrics.
While there is still some hue contrast (grey versus blue), the value contrast is quite minimal in the draft on the right as both colors are similarly “dark” and indecipherable when converted to black and white:
Choosing colors that are far apart on the color wheel, like the blue and red below, gives strong hue contrast. Choosing adjacent colors on the color wheel, like the blue and green, give lower hue contrast. Both drafts below have close to zero value contrast.
Strong hue contrast with low value contrast creates a visual pattern that almost seems to vibrate. Low contrast in all the dimensions creates a subtle tonal fabric.
Adding white, grey, or black to a given hue creates tints, tones, and shades, respectively, which result in saturation contrast. Adding white or black to a color changes the value and saturation contrasts.
The image below on the left pairs the hue (dark blue) with a tint (white added) of the same hue. The image below on the right pairs the hue (dark blue) with a tone (grey added) of the same hue for a particularly subtle effect.
Optical blending occurs when you step back from a fabric or an image and a few individual colors appear as one. Modern LED screens rely on this effect, as do color printers and Pointillist paintings.
Woven fabrics give this effect, particularly in structures similar to Plain Weave. It’s less of a factor in the Houndstooth pattern shown in the diagrams above because there are distinct blocks of each color, but it’s still a factor to consider for when the fabric is seen from a distance, particularly if the pattern is woven with fine yarn.
Optical blending is a more significant effect in Shadow Weave and most Color-And-Weave patterns, in which the thread color alternates at every other crossing. It doesn’t take much distance at all for the small specks of color to start blending. Choosing colors that will merge into a pleasing combined color is essential.
Imagine creating a beautiful pattern with red and green, getting it off the loom, washing it, and instead of Christmas-themed cloth you have … brown. The same thing can happen with yellow and purple, or blue and orange. Because of optical blending, colors that are directly opposite on the color wheel can be difficult to use together in a Shadow Weave project.
Sometimes the solution is more colors. It’s possible to enhance the color complexity of Color-and-Weave by using four different colors in the warp and weft. The two darks and the two lights need to have similar values, but can have very different hues and saturations. Optical blending with four colors can have unpredictable results though, so color sampling before committing to a large project is advised.
Sample One
Sample Two
Sample Three
The three samples above were woven on a warp that used a spring green for the light and two colors for dark (dark purple on the left and ultramarine blue on the right). The bobbins on the samples show the warp and weft colors for reference.
Sample one uses red and yellow-orange for the weft, sample two uses yellow-orange and dark green, and sample three uses pale blue and dark green. The pale blue is a tint while the other colors are all high saturations of a variety of hues.
The first and third samples are successful in terms of the colors blending with the overall design still clear and well-defined. The middle example has overly strong outlines against a muddy-colored background (at least in this weaver’s opinion!).
The final fabric made after this color sampling experiment took the greens and pale blue from the final sample, but instead of the dark purple or ultramarine it used a purple-red. The optical blend created a pleasant sage green with some unexpected iridescence.
Final Fabric
Contrast is the most important concept to keep in mind when choosing colors for Color-and-Weave projects. Contrast is most obvious when it comes from value differences, and more subtle in hue and saturation differences. When there is some level of contrast in all three color aspects, the effect is more prominent and sometimes iridescent. But, sometimes less is more. Low-contrast colors may be just the right thing for a given project where subtle is the desired effect.
Be mindful of optical blending effects. Nice colors with good contrast that look lovely on spools next to each other can optically blend in ways that look terrible in the cloth. This effect can have especially unpredictable results when more than two colors are used together. Wind an extra yard on your next warp to sample weft colors and sett, then cut off and finish the sample. Samples prevent sadness!
To experiment with these concepts, dip into a deck of Palette Scout cards and develop some combinations to sample.
The next article will explore designing a Shadow Weave pattern of your own.
More about color theory, particularly the HSV system: Leigh Cotnoir’s art and design site “learn.”
The Natural System of Colors by Moses Harris, printed at George Laidler's office, Princes-Street, Licester-Fields, 1776. The free pdf is available here.
All photos and graphics, unless otherwise noted, courtesy of Jennifer Leigh.
Jennifer learned to knit, sew, and embroider before starting kindergarten, and over the years has dabbled in more or less anything that can be done with string and/or fabric. She began weaving in 2014, and now considers it her primary art form. Jennifer recently retired from a 30 year career in tech and lives in Raleigh, NC, where she is a member of the Triangle Weavers Guild. She can be found online at her blog, reddit,
and Warpsters, which she started as a passion project to build an online community for weavers to share knowledge, ideas, and creativity.
