There is something incredibly pleasant about gradients; the slow colour shift keeps our visual awareness interested as we absorb the nuances of the change. As spinners, as long as we have three or more fibre colours, we can prepare the fibre so we can spin a gradient yarn. This handspun yarn will gradually change from one end of our yarn to the other, so we can enjoy the full spectrum, if chosen, in our finished textile too.
TL;DR: In a gradient yarn, there is a gradual shift between different colours. In this article, I explain the process to prepare the fibre from a hand-dyed braid with distinct colours. After you separate and rearrange the colours of fibre, you can use a fibre prep tool such as hand carders, blending board, or drum carder. I showcase using a drum carder for a very straightforward 2-ply gradient yarn.
To learn to prepare your fibre, you need a hand-dyed braid, your hands, and a scale. To prepare a cohesive and easy-to-spin preparation, your favourite carding tool and a diz are useful.
Choose a Hand-Dyed Braid with at Least Three Colours
Choose a hand-dyed braid with three or more colours. I chose a SweetGeorgia braid with shades of magenta, blue, and green.
Separate the Fibre into the Different Colours
Find a room with good lighting. To get started, unbraid and open up the braid of hand-dyed fibre. Find a place on the braid with one of the colour shifts, loosen the fibre, as it may be a tad compacted from dyeing. With your hands holding the length of fibre separated about 10–12″ / 25–30 cm, start separating the fibre.
Rearrange the Colours
Think about the final yarn construction. You may need a scale in some cases.
- If you plan for the final yarn to stay as singles, arrange the colours from one colour to the next in a row in the order you plan to spin them.
- If you plan on spinning a traditional 2-ply yarn, you will need two bundles of gradient fibre that you will spin on different bobbins to 2-ply. Divide the colours into two bundles with about the same weight, so if you are spinning 4 oz / 115 g total, each bundle will be about half that. To be quite precise, I use a basket where I add all the fibre in one colour and weigh it. Then I separate half of it by weight into one bundle and keep the other half in another bundle. Then I repeat this process with each of the colours.
- If spinning a traditional yarn with 3 or more plies, you would divide the total fibre into as many bundles as there are plies, with each of the bundles with all the colours of the gradient organized in the same order.
- If planning to chain-ply your singles for a 3-ply yarn, arrange the colours from one colour to the next in a row in the order you plan to spin them.
Using a Drum Carder to Blend the Colour Bundles
If you don’t have any fibre prep tools yet, you can certainly spin from the fibre as it is at this stage. If spinning two or more singles, you can keep the fibre bundles in separate containers in the order you plan to spin them. Remember to pay attention so you keep the colours in order.
Using a carding tool, we can produce a smoother transition between colours on the gradient. We can also choose our favourite spinning format: dizzed roving, batts, batting, rolags, or more, depending on the kind of yarn we want. Each of these formats has a different alignment and airiness of the fibre preparation across the whole spectrum from woollen to worsted.
With fibres such as SweetGeorgia Polwarth+Silk that tend to puff out after working with them, I find I can fit comfortably 2 oz / 60 g of fibre with minimal fibres accumulating on the small drum. As I was blending hand-dyed commercial top, I adjusted the drum carder’s drive band to the smaller whorl for a 4:1 ratio. This is recommended by Ashford to blend sliver and colours into an open and airy batt.
I took half of my total fibre, already divided as a gradient, and started adding it to the tray, colour by colour in a localized way. I started with all the pink fibre and placed it piece by piece where I could see through the attenuated fibre in the third of the tray farthest away from my body. I rotated slowly and added more fibre to the same area, adding a bit less in what would become the transition zone to the next colour in the middle third of the tray. Then I continued with this process, adding fibre to the middle of the tray with the blue fibre. Once finished, I did the same with the green fibre. I was quite pleased with the way the fibre gradient looked on the large drum.
Removing the Fibre from the Drum
I then used a diz to remove the fibre from the drum carder as roving. To do this, I stopped rotating the handle when the doffer strip (the metal section that crosses through the large drum to aid in the removal of batts with a doffer) was on top of the drum. I loosened the knobs to move the packer brush so it wouldn’t touch the large drum and placed a concave diz just after the doffer strip.
After getting a bit of fibre through the diz, I started removing the fibre as a gradient roving from the large drum. I added a slight twist to the right at the beginning of the doffed roving, and I started rolling it as a ball to keep it organized and out of the way of the drums’ teeth. I kept moving the diz clockwise on the large drum, ensuring that all the fibres under it were caught and went through the diz. After I came back to the doffer strip, I moved the diz a bit farther from my body so it would catch the fibres still on the large drum. I kept doing this until I removed all the fibres from the large drum. Halfway through this process, the ball of roving felt very awkward in my hands while handling the diz, so I decided to separate the fibre and start another roving.
The process of removing roving from a drum carder requires skill, so I decided to go slow and be gentle with myself, as it was definitely not smooth the first few times I did it. Then I repeated this entire process with the other 2 oz / 60 g of gradient fibres.
Spinning Your Gradient Preparation
You may choose your spinning approach as you wish. If I am spinning 4 oz / 115 g of fibre or less, I really like to use one bobbin to spin it all. I add 8/2 cotton as a marker spun in between each section of singles. Then I transfer each singles section to a secondary bobbin to ply them through the rings.
I hope this article has inspired you to find a beautiful braid from your stash and prepare the fibre as a gradient. If you would like to learn more, we have wonderful courses in the School of SweetGeorgia for you: A fibre prep tool, such as carding cloth and a diz, can give you the pleasure of spinning beautiful roving. Kim McKenna explored and demonstrated this technique in Spin a Hand-Dyed Braid Five Ways, both with hand carders and a blending board. Diana Twiss, in her Colour and Fibre Play course, shows how to prepare fibre with rainbow gradients with either a blending board or a drum carder. Both courses are inspiring, and I encourage you to watch them and get inspired.
If In Doubt, Swatch
Oh, I am half kidding, as I do love to “sample and swatch,” but once you have your beautiful gradient yarn, I do encourage you to choose a project to showcase it as soon as possible. As much as a handspun gradient skein is a thing of magic, seeing it on a finished accessory or garment is the bee’s knees.
Please share with us your wins or challenges in preparing a gradient yarn and your multicraftual project. We would love to see what you are making next in the SweetGeorgia + Co community!
