"Lunatic Fringe 20 Color Gamp"

Tubular Spectrum Color Gamp Kits

Have you ever wondered how two colors that look wonderful on the cones when they are sitting on your shelf can turn into such ugly cloth when they are woven together? A solution to this problem is to use a Color Gamp as your reference tool when planning projects. Color Gamps are a woven sampler with the colors arranged in the same manner in the warp as in the weft. The resulting fabric has blocks of colors as the warp and weft yarns interlace. Thus, as you plan projects, you can look at the gamp and find your warp yarns and weft yarns and examine the interaction of the two before you put them on the loom. It reduces the number of surprises at the end of your weaving project! Plus, they are beautiful too!

THE TUBULAR SPECTRUM COLOR GAMP KIT

This kit contains 1.5 oz cones of all twenty Tubular Spectrum colors (about 400 yards).The kit includes instructions for basic gamps and much more. Also, it is a great way to get a “sampler” of the colors in the Tubular Spectrum. Our kit contains everything you need to weave three square color studies, approximately 36 inches square. Explore the interactions of these pure colors in plain weave and then see the totally different effect of 2/2 twill, 3/1 twill, huck lace, Bronson, overshot, summer & winter. 4 and 8 harness instructions included. Yarn is all 10/2 mercerized cotton dyed with fiber reactive dyes to minimize fading and bleeding of the colors.

The above is the catalog/online description of the Lunatic Fringe Yarn Color Gamp Kit that Don gave me for Christmas (http://www.lunaticfringeyarns.com/GampKits.php).  As you can see from the included photo, the colors are strikingly rich and vibrant.  Catalog photos can sometimes be misleading, but as you will see in the next photo, which I took, they were spot on with the colors.....

I have been putting off warping my floor loom with the color gamp until I had received my warping trapeze that I ordered from Bruce, at Purrington Looms.  It arrived shortly before we left for our Traverse City, MI vacation, so I delayed setting up the floor loom until last week. (http://www.purringtonlooms.com/index.html)  Looks a bit crowded in my fiber room, doesn't it?   ;)  It's only attached temporarily and will be stored in the basement when I am finished winding the warp onto the loom.

My first job was to measure out the warp using my warping board.  I measured the warp from 5 spools before putting each chain onto the loom.  I was impressed even more as I saw the subtlety of the color change when the warp threads were close together.  As you can see, I am able to clamp my warping board onto my Ashford table loom stand, making it a very comfortable height from which to work. 

A close up of the 5 colors after measuring......

Next step was to spread the warp out onto the floor looms warp rod in 1" increments.  The epi (ends per inch) for my 1st color study, which will be woven in plain weave, is 24 epi.

Onto the next 5 colors........

And then those were spread out on the warp rod, giving me 1/2 of the color gamp's warp on the loom.

Time to clean up and re-arrange the room to have more space to move through it.  Tomorrow I would pull things back out and measure the other 10 colors of warp.