Janet Phillips

Colour in Fabric

    As a weaver I looked forward to Janet Phillips talk “colour in fabric”, after reading her articles in the Journal.

    Janet fell in love with colour on a trip to a weaving mill and went on to study woven textile at the Scottish College of Textiles, graduating with a first class degree. She went on to work for several years in industry. Since then she has spent time weaving her own work. In 1963 she was asked to write a book, which she based on the way she had been taught. Her latest book is the result of years of doing her own work.

    In Janets first year at college, black and white were the only colours used, to show the weave structure and texture. Her advice is to make a multi-sectional sample with a variety of threadings in both the warp and the weft. If done with the warp of one colour and the weft of another, any likely patterns can then be further sampled, and changes of colour used. This is designing on the loom rather than drafting designs on graph paper. The idea of changing the warp colours is a good idea as they are already threaded. Making your own colour wheel is useful for deciding the colours and their values in a project.

    Janet uses three other ways to decide the amounts of colours (twist yarns together like plied yarns, plaiting and winding yarns around cards). Using examples from her new book she showed some of the card winds and twists used in her work.

    Janet uses commercial coloured yarns but also dyes her own colours. She also over-dyes yarns to get the right shades.

    Another technique, includes thickening the dye and painting on to chemically soaked warps, to get patches of colours. She warned of blacks and whites as being strong and can dominate other colours. In one project a single white warp lifted the colour scheme which would have been of a sameness without it. (blues/greens)

    Like most designers, Janet uses pictures as source material but she also has a good memory for colours, although she does make notes, so when inspired by paintings in galleries, her dying skills can produce the right yarns for more weaving. We all have our favourite palette of colours that we use but when Janet was asked to use a colour she did not like she found it helpful to find a picture with it in and with other colours to give inspiration. Help with deciding colour combinations can come from books on the subjects. One book from Japan called “Book of Colour” is based on emotions but another book points out the problem of meanings being different between two people (sorry but I didn’t write the title in my notes). Whilst the book stated weaving as one of the techniques used to show colour combinations, it was warp-faced weaving and that only places the colours next to each other, not going over and under (mixing)

Janet talked of many things, most of which I hope I have mentioned. It was lovely to listen to someone who has spent their working life doing the things I am slowly getting to grips with at home, with the help of our own guild experts.  Mary Jaconelli.