Creating heathered batts is fun, and spinning them is even more satisfying, but why would you blend your own? If you’re getting bored with your solid color fibers, or you’re looking for an interesting and high-depth neutral, or if you find yourself drowning in your small bits of stash are just a few reasons. Making your own also allows you to dictate the color palette and the proportions of each color.

Let’s get started!

First, gather your color palette. We chose yellow, blue, and purple. You will need at least a total of 1 ounce of fiber in order to have decently sized batt when you’re finished. It doesn’t matter how much of each color you have, all that changes is the finished color.

These fibers will get blended until a homogeneous mixture is created, so be careful with your selection.

Colors that are opposite of each other on the color wheel (orange and blue) will muddy up the finished batt, while colors that are near each other (blue and green) will be muted, but less muddy.

Color wheel by Ray Trygstad

Take your colors and break them up into smaller chunks, otherwise it will take longer to mix together.

Blend this through your drum carder as many times as it takes until you achieve a mostly homogeneous mixture. With these three colors, it took roughly 12-15 passes through the carder to get it to a mixture we liked. Some fibers/colors may take longer to integrate than others. You’ll notice that after the first pass, the colors start bleeding together at the edges.

Because this type of color mixing involves fibers instead of small microscopic pigments, you will see all of the individual colors inside your batt when up close, but they will be more muted when far away.

Experiment with this technique and show us your ingredients and finished batts over on Instagram using the hashtag #strauchfiber.