Dyeing

One of my favourite methods to dye is Wanda Kerr’s wandering method. Wanda is a master at understanding dyes and making beautiful combinations. The subtle changes of these light wanderings will work well for the small squares I plan to use in the sky on the next rug. I want to make more of these in slightly darker values to give the sky some depth.

Because it is a gift, this is all I can show you of the third chair seat–the troublesome one. We have finally come to  a truce–but only because I made several concessions demanded by the piece. As I was thinking about all of this, I rediscovered Mary Ann Wise’s article in  Rug Hooking Magazine, Jan/Feb 2010. (What a resource these back issues are!) This article is well worth checking out–there are tips to help you analyze your rug when you know things aren’t right. Tip 1 warns that you have to avoid getting too attached to images “that make the composition trite or sentimental”, or as she says, you must “kill the darlings”. I had wanted to have hearts in the sky and I thought they would work as the circles did in the second piece here. Instead they seemed too cute and very distracting, actually tacky! They are still there now if you squint, but in the same value they don’t irritate. Big lesson learned before the big rug.

We decided on the size of the new rug last night and the border. I now need to confirm the style of the main motif. The third sample veered too close to a real landscape for my liking, so I am hoping to stay more primitive and symbolic–but it’s quite a journey, as you know, with discoveries all along the way. Off now to cut and serge the linen backing–that I know is straightforward!

I love this photo . It captures the creative intensity of the day–the piles of colour on the table, the lovely work being created. Also the hooking on the wall behind and reflected in the mirror on the right.

9 students spent the day at Bookhou creating amazing work.

Here is the demo from a fresh angle:

and here they are hard at work:

and here are the pieces near the end of the workshop. These folks were almost all first-time rug hookers. I was so impressed by their achievements!

For the upcoming hooking workshop, I decided to do a small demo piece of hooked circles, bright in the foreground, dark in behind. Here is the very beginning of it.

Like every other rug hooker, I have a basket of left over wool from many projects. This would be the source of my background.

I took big handfuls of all colours and divided them into three piles: light, medium and dark. I soaked these in synthrapol for about an hour. Then I plunked the dark group in my kitchen kettle with 3/16 blue violet, the medium group with 3/16 teal and the light group with 1/8 turquoise. I cooked each group about 1/2 hour, adding citric acid in the first batch.

And here is the result. Beautiful rich darks and mediums from the first two batches, and highlights of turquoise for the circles. Wool is incredibly resilient. These strips went easily from the dye pot to the rinse cycle of my machine to air drying without getting tangled. Soon they will be hooked into the trivet. Another way to recycle!

I’ve been dyeing to prepare for my week at Green Mountain rug school.  I needed some more of the border colours.  The light spot outlines all the motifs–I’ve already used over a yard of it.  The dark colour was dyed over already darkish textures as pictured in the second photo.  I find this gives the best results both in colour and hand.

And here is Fireworks with the centre almost all hooked and half of the border drawn.  I always include a bird on my rugs and am just thinking about where the one on this rug will go.