Camaj Fiber Arts - The Fine Side of Fiber

How  Drum Carding Affects Color Blending

Drum carding is an excellent way to blend colors or blend different fibers.  I want to show you using two of my custom-blended combed tops how each pass further blends each color to make almost one color in the end.

How can you “blend” colors on a drum carder when you still have two separate colors you ask?  When two colors are broken down into very small units and lie side by side there is a phenomena that occurs called optical blending. This lends perfectly to making new colors through blending on a drum carder or blending hackle.  

Think of pixels. A pixel is a unit of color.  A pixel is the smallest unit of a digital image or graphic that can be displayed and represented on a digital display device. Pixels are combined to form a complete image, video, text or any visible thing on a computer display. A pixel is also known as a picture element.

When the pixels are large we see separate colors (fig 1.)  But when the pixels are very small (Fig 2), our eye cannot differentiate between the separate colors that make up the image.   

This is commercially prepared combed top. All the short cuts are removed and what is left is a fiber that is essentially the same length all well aligned.  It comes in sort of a tube.  As it is made the fiber is  flat and the machine sort of folds it into a tube.

There is a seam in the tube and when you find it you can gently open the fiber back to its flat form and get a better look at all the colors of the top. 

I used a Strauch Mad Battr and carded the fiber in the orietation above.  You can see with each pass how the fiber blend more and more moving toward a homogoneous blend.  The final fiber is nearly one color.  If it were spun it would be a sort of flat color without much contract or depth.

This gives you a really good idea of how many passes it may take to blend a few different fibers together if you wanted to make a fully blended batt. This is also the concept when blending custom colors, for example, blending red and yellow to make orange.

This also give you the power to change up combed tops you don't like. Even add other colors or texture to give it new life.  I show you how in my Transform your Spinning Box or Stash video.

Or take my home study course on how to blend the rainbow on your drum carder.

 Even learn how to expertly drum card a sleepy gradient batt.