Mixing Fiber

This is a post about mixing fibers, I don’t mean wool with cotton for example, I’m talking about mixing different colors of fiber to create a new color of fiber. It is amazing to me how this happens.

It makes more sense to me to mix red paint with blue paint and get purple paint, they are a liquid. Because it is something I learned so young I don’t question why there’s a new color. Mixing red and blue always make purple. Like 1+1=2, it just is.

However when the material being mixed is dry, like fiber, and a new color appears, to me it’s a magic trick. I know that both of these situations have to do with which part of light wave is reflected based on some other things that are going on. But instead of taking all the fun out of it I like to not think about the science side too much and just mix colors.

I mixed these two colors of wool using the drum carder to get gray.

I decided three passes was sufficient for the color I wanted. Below you can see the progression of each pass, with one pass on the top and three passes on the bottom.

Part of the process is taking the batt off of the drum carder, splitting it and re-carding it. While I was doing that I saw what is pictured below and thought it was so cool. This is after one pass. On the first pass I layer on the two different colors to start the mixing process.