gradient blending colorway wool,not dye?

[artisticfable]

hello everyone
i have been educateing myself for a year and a half now....i purchased numerous workshops,learned techniques in wool(dry,wet,nuno...)i did not know even eisted...but,all this time i have one question i cannot seam to quite get an answer to...
i want to make a...bag,for example...use 3 complementary colours,and make them blend into eachother,so it looks almost sculptural....i belive rena laundry from lalabug d.has the best result in doing this with her pieces,but i just cannot wrap my mind around how to achive that kind of a result
if any of you out there have some opinions,and experiance in this field...plz,plz help a girl out
thank you all in advance

[jwugg]

Hi & welcome - we'd love to see some of the work you've made so far....

My method for blending 2 colours (I'm sure others' will have more ways) is - to lay out the 1st 2 layers in opposite directions with the change of colour, this starts to give a little transition where they overlap. Then the following layer (or 2, depending on how many you're doing all together) blend a little of colour 1 into colour 2 & vice versa for the rows each side of the join. Then on the last layer I put a mix of the 2 colours on the midway, then tiny wisps of each on top of the other.

It's 1 of those things that comes better with practice, I think.

[halay]

I think you can achieve this effect only if you are using carded wool in bats. The wool in tape (sliver) leaves long "tails" which don't look nice on the contrasting colour. As Jill said you simply achieve this by overlaping two different colours.

[Shepherdess]

You can use some hand carders to blend a little of each colour to use at the transition. thee colour changes are gradual and slow. Take advantage of the thinner edge of the wool you pull out of the wool top/roving. to feather in a new colour. I would practice on some simple rectangles until you get what you like.

[zed]

It's easier the more gradual the blend and larger the area, because of wool staple length and because, obviously you can do it more smoothly. I do it the way I would with paint, like if I wanted to blend red into yellow with orange in between, I gradually add more of the other colour. So, I'll lay out columns of red, orange, yellow, then I'll hand blend some red and orange, and orange and yellow, add the red/orange to the middle of the red/orange over lap, and some orange/yellow to the orange/yellow overlap. Then it's just a case of adding wisps until it looks right, a bit more red to the blend and go over the red end, a bit more orange etc.

This is what I meant about it being easier if it's more gradual over a larger area, this pic, I just did a little blend between colours to soften the edges:

Textured Rainbow by zedster01, on Flickr

But this one had more over a larger area:
Rainbow notebook cover by zedster01, on Flickr

This is a pic of the layout for the one above, a bit small, but you can see all the different shades:
Crimped nylon and merino by zedster01, on Flickr