Random Stripe Project Idea: Season Themed Dishtowels

 After my successful experiment in random stripes, I started to think about how to apply random stripes. An 8-shaft leaf draft I found floating around the internet gave me an idea.

Even with its complicated treadling, the leaf motif is perfect for an "inspired by nature" project. My idea is to make four sets of season themed dishtowels, using different colors to represent the seasons. 

• The weft forms the shape of the leaf. I can use one representative color for each season. That will make for easier weaving, since I won't have to keep track of and change weft colors.
• The warp colors color the leaf. Here's where I'm thinking about the random stripes. If I choose a variety of yarns in seasonal leaf colors, I can give the leaves some personality, i.e. they won't all be exactly the same. At least not horizontally.

So that's the idea I'm working on at the moment. As soon as I finish painting the ceiling in our newly remodeled front room, I'll be able to get to work dressing the loom. 

Random Stripe Project Idea: Season Themed Dishtowels 

© 2026 by Leigh at Leigh's Fiber Journal

Pattern and Randomness in Nature

I started the year with a goal of permaculture weaving. Exactly what that meant, I wasn't sure, but I knew I wanted to apply permaculture principles to weaving design. I wanted to use nature as the basis for my weaving. I made a list of four things to form a starting point: colors, patterns, shapes, and fibers from nature. 

Pattern is one such permaculture principle. I see patterns everywhere in nature: waves, spirals, lobes, branches, nets, scatters, cloud forms, tessellations, Fibonacci sequences, the golden rectangle, etc.

Trees grow in a predictable branching pattern. It may look
different for different types of trees, but the pattern is there.

When I started making my stripes from nature photographs, I found myself asking questions. Does everything in nature fits a pattern? I'm applying human tools and techniques to get color stripes from photos. The result is a set of random stripes. But when I duplicate them to make a larger design, a pattern always emerges. 

In experiment #4 I managed to create random stripes, but they didn't come easily, they came with quite a bit of mental effort. It got me asking the question, is anything in nature truly random? Permaculture leans toward answering that question with "no." Curious, I brought the question of randomness in nature to the permies.com forums. It lead to an extremely interesting discussion, which you can read for yourself by following that link. 

After thinking about the various views, my takeaway is that what we see and how we see it is a matter of perspective. For example, these fallen leaves

I see no pattern in the way they lie upon the ground. Yet in reading other peoples' views on the forum, I realized that the pattern is in the seasonal cycle of growth and dormancy. In spring new leaves grow and in autumn they die and fall to the ground. This is the pattern. Perhaps "random" is what we see when we focus on details instead of the big picture. 

Trying to translate that to permaculture weaving will be a challenge. I'm not working with tangible objects such as growing zones, varieties of plants, weather patterns, the slope of the land, the type of soil, etc. I'm working with yarn, color, texture, and the interlacement of warp and weft. At best, I can create an abstract interpretation of what I see in nature. 

Artists and artisans must focus on details to decide how to interpret them with their art or craft. In weaving, this is the basis of weaving draft design. My challenge will be applying my knowledge of weaving to what I observe in nature. Should be fun. 

Pattern and Randomness in Nature 

© 2026 by Leigh at Leigh's Fiber Journal

Horizontal Color Stripe Experiment #4 (Random Stripes)

In my Horizontal Stripes From Nature post, I made the observation that when I repeated the random stripes I extracted from a photograph, I ended up with a pattern. Meg (Unravelling blog) left an interesting reply,

"Regular repeats make things look the opposite of natural? I wonder if you could print one of them, cut them up, and try placing them in orders that appear less predictable?"

I'm always up for a challenge, so I decided to give this a try. I decided to see if I could expand on my sample stripes to create random stripes.

Here's the photo I chose. 

And here are the stripes I got.

Could I make a larger sample with more stripes without getting a pattern? Could I create a random look by dissecting the image, rearranging the pieces, and then putting them together in a random way?

I worked on this for several days. I didn't print it out, but used my photo editor to crop out various sections of stripes. Try and I might, I ended up with an identifiable pattern. I recall experiencing the same thing in the past when I tried to serendipitously make a random stripe warp. For some reason, it never looked random.

So I let it sit for several days, thinking I was going to give it up. Last night I had an inspiration. This morning I worked with smaller sections of stripes, flipping some, and even changing their width. I managed to produce this - 

Do you think it will pass for random?

What I discovered, is that it's a lot more work to create something that looks unpredictable. It required way more planning and experimentation. I had to evaluate each addition by looking for a pattern to appear. So this was definitely an interesting experiment. Probably one I wouldn't have tried without Meg's questions. 

Would I ever use random stripes in a weaving project? Actually, I have an idea for something which I'll try in the near future. 

Horizontal Color Stripe Experiment #4 (Random Stripes) 

© 2026 by Leigh at Leigh's Fiber Journal

Horizontal Color Stripe Experiment #3

For experiment #3, I chose a photo with muted winter colors.

For this one, my first step was to add guidelines, just to see if I find them helpful.

They do help me visualize the width of the stripes as a whole pattern, which I like. I followed the same procedure for filling them with color as I did with my first experiment.

One thing I've discovered is that if I want to get really fussy about which color I choose with the color picker, I can enlarge the image 800 times. Then I can select from the individual pixels of color. 

This was helpful because I want to approximate the shades of the color bands my eye sees in the photo. This was quicker than making multiple random guesses with the color picker.

Here's what I ended up with

To do something different. I copied it and flipped the copy vertically. Then I put the two together.

I would like that one as a throw rug. 

Here it is with eight of these together pasted together to make simple horizontal stripes.

It kind of reminds me of a button-down shirt Dan used to have. 

So that's a simple way to take an irregular stripe pattern and give it a sense of symmetry.

Horizontal Color Stripe Experiment #3 

© 2026 by Leigh at Leigh's Fiber Journal

Horizontal Color Stripe Experiment #2

 For this one, I chose a photo with less orange and more blue. It's a winter sunrise, shot from the back of my goat barn.

I cropped a small section with colors that appeal to me. 

I didn't tweak the overall color this time, but followed the same steps as last time to create my stripes. 

As a standalone design unit, I can't think of much to do with it. My first idea was to change the width of the stripes for a towel or throw rug shape. I did this easily by elongating the image.

From there I experimented with duplicating the image and playing around with the arrangement.

I like it! And it's something I never would have come up by starting from scratch with just my brain. 

One thing I'm realizing is that this is a different way to approach color choices. I typically start with a weave structure and choose colors for it. My problem, however, is that I always seem to gravitate toward the same colors. With this exercise, I had a different starting point, and ended up with colors I probably wouldn't have selected otherwise. And I could apply these colors and stripes to almost any weave structure.

It seems like this experiment is opening up all kinds of new possibilities. 

Horizontal Color Stripe Experiment #2 

© 2026 by Leigh at Leigh's Fiber Journal