A New Rug Hooking Project in Progress: "Three Red Circles"

I'm back to a shaped piece with this work, with overlapping circles mounted on a rectangle. I thought it would be interesting to use a different color range than my mostly usual, and go with dark colors, the "pedestal" being close to black. The subject could be fairly buoyant (the bouncing balls of Betty Boop?) and the dark colors might push against that, making the piece more complex.




The dyeing session for this work did not go easily at all. What you see above are the final colors, but it took a while to get there. For the blacks, I started with a color called "Silver Gray", which looked great in my swatch book, but when I dyed the wool, it came out close to violet; I guess the color had an undertone of red. So the wool went back into the dye pot with black and a warm brown, and that fixed the color. Then to the reds: the darkest red was at first too light, so needed to be redyed. I added some yellow to the lightest red to create a cool to warm color movement, but then the middle red looked too cool, so back in the pot to add some yellow to that too, at which point the balance of colors looked right.




Here's the full sized drawing, which is around 11 x 14 inches. For the circles, I run around the house looking for bowls, pots, or other objects, such as rolls of tape, to find just the right size to use as a template. Above are embroidery hoop, bowl, bowl.




And there's the piece just begun, with the black portion to be hooked vertically, as if holding up the circles, which will be concentrically hooked to their centers. When I look at the sketch above, the circles look like heads in a crowd; I wonder what imagery will pop up when I finish this.