A New Textile: "Blue Squares"

Blue Squares, hand dyed wool on linen, 10 x 23 1/2 in. 

After the more complex compositions of my last two textiles, which you can see here and here, I wanted to do something more clear and simple: four small squares floating on a horizontally divided ground. I dyed the squares an intense color, so they would have the illusion of popping forward in space. Getting the colors to work wasn't easy, requiring more dips into the dye pot for the blue and especially for the mottled yellow: the first attempt at that was a failure and I had to begin again.

Blue Squares detail

I was interested in getting a mottled color, with patches of blue and red. The way to do this is to scrunch the wool in a wide pan of water and drop the dye color onto it in spots. My first attempt got away from me and the wool ended up a pink color, so I tried again. I decided to aim for an overall yellowish, with varied dashes of color. Hooking it in an overall random pattern emphasizes the irregularity of the color and contrasts with the straight lines of blue and reddish brown. This adds some nuance to a straightforward composition.