WATERCOLOURS &
Lace is a hand-dyed yarn
company run by Julie
Harris, and she has united
her love of yarn with her
skills as a botanical artist
to develop a huge range
of gorgeous colourways. Based in Norfolk,
Julie is also a talented knitwear designer,
specialising in intricate lace shawls. We
chatted with Julie to discover how she
came to set up her dyeing business, and
how she creates her hand-dyed colours.
When did you first try dyeing yarn?
“I found some hand-dyed yarn at a show
and fell in love with some lace shawl
patterns on Ravelry, so I knitted a couple
of the designs. I was disappointed to find
the colours pooled or gave obvious stripes,
which I felt didn’t look right for lace.
So, I bought a book and some undyed
laceweight yarn and had a go myself,
with the aim of producing something with
short and irregular colour changes.
“I dyed my first skeins in 2011, mainly
for myself - although friends and relations
started admiring them, and my cousin sold
a few in her gift shop in the early days.
“Watercolours and Lace became a
business in 2012. I’d suffered a neck injury
in late 2011 which required surgery, and
my father was terminally ill at the time.
I was really stressed and decided to give up
my day job, which meant I was able to
spend more time with my Dad. After his
death, I needed something to occupy my
time, and decided to see if I could turn yarn
dyeing into a job. My wonderful husband
Alan retired from his own job a year later
and became my admin manager, computer
expert and general factotum/heavy lifter.
“The business name relates to most of
my yarn being designed for lace knitting,
and from my other love - watercolour
painting. Originally, I’d learned to paintlandscapes, but I later became more
interested in botanical studies. Nowadays
I’m more often found painting on yarn
than on paper!
“We started selling online via Etsy,
investing in our own website a couple of
years later, and in 2013 we took the plunge
and went to our first yarn show as
exhibitors - Fibre-East in Bedfordshire.”Can you remember the first colourway
you ever created?
“Alan created a wonderful spreadsheet
system for me to track the recipe for every
skein, so I can tell you exactly which one
it was! It was a BFL laceweight in shades of
blue and purple, which I called Ultramarine
Violet. I knitted my ‘Haruni’ shawl design
with some of it, which I still wear today.”What fibres do you like to work with?
“I only use natural fibres, as I really don’t
like working with synthetics - both fromArtistic visions
Indie dyer and botanical artist Julie Harris creates stunning
hand-painted yarns for her brand Watercolours and Lace
FEATURE
Julie loves to work
with natural British
yarns, including
Wensleydale woolThe Knitter 41 Issue 150