Lately I’ve been obsessed with tonal yarns. These yarns are dyed so that they follow one color, but cover different tones throughout the yarn. The best part about using these yarns is they add shading and interest to your weaves and all you have to do is weave with them as you normally would. That’s a win-win in my book!
You can use the tonal yarns by themselves or you can pair them up with the same base color to give it some dimension. In the cover photo, I’m showing how I used tonal yarn with my solid yarn to give my shag weave more dimension. If you’d like to try shag weaving, I have a tutorial on it right here.
I also like to make the plain weave (or really any technique) using one solid yarn and a matching tonal yarn. Combining the colors makes subtle changes in the coloring of the weave. In this example, I wove some blocks with just the tonal yarn and the background with a combination of the tonal and a solid. You can see the difference, when you weave with just the tonal the color changes are more obvious. (If you’re wondering how to block weave, I shared how I did it here).
Here is an example of my pairing of the yarns. When the tonal yarn is stretched out, the change in color is subtle and almost unnoticeable. It draws the viewer’s eye in as it creates a very simple shading within the color. I’ve shared my current favorite tonal yarns below in the Shop This Post area. I have my old friends hot pink, mustard, and purple, along with a white/grey to balance the colors out. But there are a lot of different tonal yarns that I’m hoping to add to my collection.
What are your go to colors? Do you switch them around every season, or are you more like me and stick with them for quite a while before you move on? I’m also curious if you’ve tried a simple shading like this before. Do you normally weave with solid colored yarn or tonal yarn? Have you tried pairing the two different yarns together in your weaves?
Happy Weaving!
Kate
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