I’ve experimented with doing something time-consuming and stupid in inkle weaving, as one does. I warped a band up last night using a bunch of #10 size thread in colors I wanted to use up, to see how it goes. The colors are weird, I know. Please overlook.

It takes a long time to warp doing that. That’s kind of obvious, but it bears saying. Not three times as long, but. A long time. And you need to be careful not to stretch the thread as you wrap it, because once all the three winds are on and it’s time to move along, you won’t be able to easily adjust the tension. So it takes a little extra care with the tension as well.

Anyway, there is one color in here that is so very very delightful. Lookit the yellow.

In case you are missing it, it is rad. Those flower stripes read as yellow from farther away, but they have some cool depth to them.

This kind of thread can be hard to use in band weaving because the variegation gets lost and messes up a strong pattern. I mean, if you have hella contrast with ALL the colors in the variegation, and a simple-ish pattern, it can work, but everything has to be just so. Look at this highly variegated thread and how it didn’t really work out in the plainweave sections. I like it in the patterned sections because HELLO value contrast! But in the plainweave sections in between it falls flat:

There’s probably no help for the above-pictured carnival colored band, as far as taming the variegation. But for variegation that consists of different values of one hue or nearly so, yeah, there may be some help.

To sum up: If you want to work a monochromatic variegated thread into a sort of busy pattern, try doubling or tripling the strand (accounting for the resulting thickness difference, of course.)  This will take extra warping time and care, but it might be awesome.