3 Ways to Experiment With Color In Your Next Spinning Project

With so many dyed fibers available to handspinners these days, you may be wondering how to best put them to use for your next project. There are many ways to incorporate color into your next project - too many to cover in just one blog post! We've seen lots of great articles and blog posts covering some of the better-known techniques such as chain-plying and fractal spinning, so today we'd like to share some different ways to approach dyed fibers when spinning yarn:

1. Spin a two-color single: Create a truly unique yarn by selecting two complementary colors of dyed fiber to hold together as you spin a single! You may wish to use the resulting yarn as-is - we recommend a slight felting process to give it added strength, creating what is known as a supported single. Or, you may choose to ply with a solid-color single which either matches or coordinates with your two-color single to create a variegated, tweedy yarn!

2. Use a blending board to create rolags with repeatable patterns: this handy fiber prep tool is more affordable and portable than a drum carder, and it gives fiber artists the freedom to create rolags which can be used to spin interesting yarns! Striped, ombre, or colorful gradient rolags are all easy to create on a blending board. Below is an easy-to-follow video tutorial from Ashford demonstrating how to use this tool: 

3. Mix & Match Your Singles: If you have a lot of natural-colored fleece and fiber and you don't want to dye the resulting yarn, try plying your natural-colored single with dyed single to create a marled effect. In the top example, a natural brown single is plied with a dyed single similar in value for a subtle tweed effect; in the bottom example, a natural white single is plied with a brightly-colored dyed fiber for a fun barber-pole effect.

We look forward to a colorful, fibery spring - thanks for joining us!

All the best,

Chris, Nancy, and the entire Woolery team