I really enjoyed seeing the black and white patterns of Project 12 appear on the loom, but I am really more of a bright colour person. So I decided to make up for all of that black and white with a real burst of colour.

I’m going to weave a colour gamp using all the colours of 5/2 cotton that I have. First, I took the colours and arranged them in a colour wheel with neutral colours in the centre. However, when you weave, you don’t (generally) weave a tube, so I chose where to break the wheel and lined the colours up in the order that I would wind them onto the warping mill.

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I have 11 colours and a loom width of 60cm, so I’ll warp 5cm (2 inches) of each colour at 14epi (ie 28 ends), the warp length will be 6m. The manufacturer’s sett recommendation for 5/2 cotton is 16epi; however, when weaving the black and white samples I found that I had to beat very hard on my table loom to achieve 16epi. 14epi gave me a slightly softer fabric and it was SO much easier to beat. A 6m warp will let me weave several items on the same warp – a plainweave gamp, a twill gamp (I’m not sure if it will be a 2/2 twill or 1/3 twill). I could also rethread the heddles so that I could weave a gamp in a completely different structure; or I could just play with the remainder of the warp.

The weft will be the same colour sequence as the warp – but I will add weft stripes of black, white, grey and cream at one end of each gamp.

Yesterday, I wound the warp; today I tied the cross and removed the warp from the warping mill in a tight chain.

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