Tag Archives: Pantone

More progress

10 more inches

I’m not going to take another photo until this sucker is off the loom. Right now, I have about 8 inches to go, and 20 butterflies going. Why? Who knows!

In other news

After working on a commission, I thought I would never use the color green again, but I have excavated for the excess yarns and overdyed part of them with blue. The “new” yarns aren’t washed yet, so that picture will have to wait. Next week. I did take a sample of each color so that I can compare, and there’s the picture below also.

Green yarn

Since I’m speaking about greens, how ’bout these pictures from Borough Market of green vegetables? I can’t remember what the swirly one in the second picture is called, but I love the pattern.

Although I’ll be dyeing some black yarns next, I’m thinking about overdyeing the rest of the green yarns with turquoise. Do you think those yarns would be able to play nice in a weaving?

Looking at these greens reminds me of Pantone’s color of the year, Greenery. If you go to the Greenery page, scroll down to look at their suggested color combinations.

Asparagus

Vegetables

Then there’s the sunflowers. I took a photo of sunflowers and used Waterlogue on it, thinking that some sort of blurry “painting” might make a good weaving. Hmmm….. maybe I should try the vegetable pictures with Waterlogue too.

Sunflowers

Sunflowers 2

It’s that time of year

No, not the holiday season.

 It’s Pantone’s color of the year announcement-time-of-year. This year’s choice is not my favorite color. How ’bout you?

Of course, I wasn’t crazy about last year’s (a baby blue and pink, which of course, had a much better name than mine) choice either. I don’t object to green, nor do I object to this particular color–in small doses.

Maria Killam has a recent blog post about the new color of the year. I like the pictures she posted using this green. You’ll notice that in each picture there’s usually just a bit of this color, except for the wall of grass. That’s just an interesting wall and makes me wonder how they did that.

I do understand the sentiment expressed on this color image. Do you think greenery will solve all the unrest in the United States? Calm the seas, so to speak?

Greenery

Using green

Squares Cubed, hand-dyed wool yarn, tapestry, 25 x 75 inches total, ©Sherri Coffey, private collection

Squares Triptych, commissioned

Your turn

So, it’s your turn. I want to hear from you. I’m really curious…what do you think of these “color pairings?” You can see the color of the year and all the various “color pairings” here.

 

 

Research? Of course not!

Magentss I’m doing some dyeing with new-to-me dyes. I know of other weavers who use these WashFast dyes (labeled Nylomine), so I thought I’d give them a try, but that wasn’t the main impetus. It was because of the pairing of WashFast dyes and the Pantone forecast for spring 2014. It’s a PDF, so I can’t post the exact link, but it’s first on this page.

I’ve ordered the dyes, made a plan for getting samples done, and started Sunday. Right away, I was concerned. But first, going back a bit, I have the wool color card from ProChemical for these dyes and had noticed that nearly all of the colors were dyed at a 1.5-2% solution. Most all of the dyeing I do is at 1%, so that’s how I’m doing my samples. From the first weighing of the dyes, I noticed that it seems to take more dye to reach that 1% amount. I also noticed that when the dyes are added to the water in the pots, they look anemic. So, I decided to do a little research about the difference between WashFast dyes and the Lanaset-type I’ve been using (ProChem calls them Sabraset). That led me to Paula Burch and her All About Dyeing website. What I have discovered is that these dyes may not be as washfast and lightfast as the Sabraset dyes. I’m going to forge on though. Dyeing all the reds now, but then I’m going to clean out those pots and start with yellows, moving up the list to darker colors.

By the way, I knew about Paula’s dyeing website but had forgotten about what a wealth of information it is, from descriptions of dyes to methods to book reviews, it runs the gamut. Check it out.

Another ode to color

Do you notice color everywhere? Pattern? I do. I love color! And I find myself noticing lines, shapes, etc. all the time.

The other day I was in Chili’s to get a to-go meal when I noticed the wall in front of me. And even though there were other people waiting with me, I got out my phone and took a picture. That kind of thing can get embarrassing sometime, but I really love the colors. Make a great rug! Each one was painted on an individual board, maybe a 1 x 4.

We all know who/what Pantone is, right? I say an article in the NY Times about the origin of that ever more famous color system. Interesting how the idea was sparked, and boy, do I have sympathy with the task the inventor had–mixing the beiges of women’s hosiery. Now, not many days go by without some reference to Pantone. Wish it wasn’t so darn expensive!

If your go to the article, be sure and read the last few lines. And if you want to see how real color geeks think, look at the comments below the article.

 

Pantone time again

Until I saw the article in the WSJ this morning, I had totally forgotten about Pantone and its color of the year. How could that happen! There’s even a video. I wanted the graphic at the bottom of the print edition page, but alas, it was not to be. But in my search, I went to Pantone’s website. It’s worth a look to just see their slideshow of green things–ahem, emerald things. In addition, there is a link

to the Pinterest page. For someone who loves color, well, it’s wonderful. Color everywhere!RainbowI saw this on their products page, and was interested enough to go to Dick Blick and find out more. Sad to say that the reviews weren’t good.

I bought this last summer. Is it green? Turquoise? Was I ahead of the trend or still trailing behind?

What do you think of Emerald?