First Full-Day Warp Painting Workshop

 Beginning the workshop with a color exercise - designing color palettes for our yarn

I taught my very first full-day warp painting workshop at the Midwest Weavers Association Confluence conference in Des Moines this June 2023. I was pretty nervous about teaching this workshop. The method I use to dye yarn in my own studio is pretty technical. I measure things with graduated cylinders, microgram scales and sometimes even syringes. What I do is definitely NOT for everyone, but I also know what I do is designed to be repeatable and easily adjusted to get fairly accurate results. I wanted my participants to leave the class feeling confident that they could continue to practice and painting yarn on their own, and in their own way, if they chose (or at least like what they made in class!)

I spent a lot of time working on breaking my own method down into something in my own mind was fun, not too intimidating, but with intention and results that could actually be repeated and improved on with practice at home. We started with a color exercise to get everyone thinking about what colors they were most interested in trying to achieve. We got down to brass tacks on how to prep yarn for dye, how to handle yarn, how the dye chemistry works, how to mix dye powders...all the things to continue from home anytime.

It was a LOT of information. I didn't want to skimp on info, because my hope is this one-day workshop is just the beginning of yarn painting for my students.

By the end of the class, I think I got us there? Participants took their dyed yarn home to finish washing out (the dye takes a long time to set). I have been very excited to see the results! See the examples below. I think they did an AWESOME job painting yarn for the first time, with colorways they designed themselves! Everyone's results are unique to the artist. I look forward to teaching more workshops like this, learning and fine-tuning the class. (And maaaybe seeing some of the warps woven up hint hint??) I am a total geek about my dye process!