A New Rug Hooking Project in Progress: "Resting"

After doing four shaped pieces, I decided to go back to a more traditional rectangle framing an image. I'm calling this one Resting for now, because it looks like the long oval shape has settled down comfortably to nestle against the bottom edge. In the thumbnail and color sketch above, you can see that my idea right from the beginning was to have the direction of the rug hooking to be vertical, pressing down against the oval.




In the sketch, I envisioned the color of the background blue-green would go from a darker value at the top to a lighter value below, so I dip dyed the wool. I placed some dye in the pot, and using a four foot length of 12 inch wide wool, I dipped one end of it into the dye, up and down, each time dropping more of the fabric into the dye. Then I finally dropped the whole length into the pot with the much diminished dye. This technique results in a light to dark wool color. I can also add other colors during the process if I'd like a hue change along with a value change.




Here is the piece well underway. Although I knew I wanted the background hooked vertically, I wasn't sure of how to do the oval. I could have taken a more geometric path by hooking the wool in concentric ovals, but decided to have the contrast of wandering and straight. Maybe the irregular hooking will give the oval a slight organic quality, a pink body settling.