The Tubular Spectrum™ Story

A while ago (we really have lost track of how many years ago it was), we wanted to weave a color gamp.  There was no coherent set of colors, in any fiber that could be woven into a color gamp.  So, a guild full of intrepid weavers and dyers in North Florida had a dye party and created enough brightly colored cotton yarn to create color gamps.  After weaving the gamps from those first dyepots, there was a cry for more yarn from other weavers who didn't want to spend the days coloring yarn and themselves.  And the Lunatic Fringe was born!

The Tubular Spectrum

From those first dyepots, and some study about color systems, we developed the set of brightly colored yarns that we call the Tubular Spectrum.  These colors and their color names are based on Albert Munsell's color system.  Munsell was a painter, who in 1905 developed the concept of five primary colors, instead of the accepted three.  By using purple and green as additional primaries, he was able to expand the color wheel to include purple blues and red purples.   Munsell further extended his color concept to include grays into the color system, and we gleefully grabbed onto those as well to bring our total Tubular Spectrum to 27 colors.  In 2018 we decided to move outside of the original 20 colors and expanded our colorline to include Tint's and Tones (TNT).  This explosion of color has now brought us up to 45 colors in the Tubular Spectrum line.  These yarns are our  interpretation of Munsell's original color concept.  Not only do we have an explosion of color, but we have the yarns available in 4 sizes:  3/2 and 5/2, 10/2 and 20/2.

5 Primary Colors

In the color system that is the basis for the Tubular Spectrum™:  Yellow, Red, Purple, Blue and Green are the primary colors.  Yellow Red, Red Purple, Purple Blue, Blue Green and Green Yellow are the secondary colors.  We wanted to have both warm and cool shades of the primaries and secondaries and so created two hues of each...thus the 5 and 10 numbers that go with the color names.

Quality Dyes and Yarns

To make these yarns, we use 100% mercerized cotton and the best fiber reactive dyes to bring you an exceptionally high quality yarn, in a visually pleasing form so that even before you weave your color study you can enjoy your Tubular Spectrum™.  We ensure that our yarns are as colorfast as possible, so go ahead and plan those projects with the bright colors with white…you will still have the same yarn colors that you started with, even with repeated washings!

Supporting the American Textile Industry

We are committed to supporting the American textile industry as much as possible.  The last US mercerizing facility closed its doors in 2009, so we now use imported mercerized yarn for our Tubular Spectrum™ yarns.  But we do contract with US dyehouses to dye the yarns, and when mercerized yarn becomes available in the US again, we will switch to the US product.

 

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