DYEING THOSE SWATCHES – WELL OVERDYEING…

I had a few people ask me to clarify my instructions – so I decided it might be a good idea to redo them with maybe a few pix! Because a picture is worth… And aren’t we all very very visual!

So here goes!

I used a very bright green 6 value swatch by Rittermere Hurst Field. As I mentioned, I do not do fine shading so valued swatches are not something I use. They are too solid for the kind of hooking I do and also very short as they ARE meant for shading. However, for a landscape or Van Gogh or Group of Seven style hooked rug they will be perfect as you want to use shorter “strokes”. But first they need hmmmmm, upcycling!

Step 1. Take apart your valued swatch – it should normally range from ultra light to dark – in my case there were no ultra lights or ultra darks but rather a variety of greens.  Soak well in warm water with a touch of soap…

Step 2. Mix up 1/16 of 3 different colours that you want to use to “spot” your swatch – one colour per 2 cup measuring cup.  I chose the following colours Magic Carpet Red Brown in one cup; Moss green in another and Yellow in the third.  Add a table spoon of vineagar and 1 cup boiling water. So you now have 3 measuring cups with 1/16 of a different dye colour in each cup and 1 cup of boiling water and a dash of vinegar.

Step 3.  Take the 6 (or 8 depending on your swatch) pieces of soaked wool and squish together in a 2 cup measuring cup or 4 cup measuring cup if you want your wool less spotty and pour one of the cups of dye over top and microwave for 3.5 minutes (I have a short 3.5 minute reheat button on my microwave but could be 3 or 4 minutes or more depending on how dark the dye is as you want it to totally absorb).  Remove from microwave and flip the wool over (use gloves as it will be hot) and dump out most of the clear hot water and pour on the second dye and microwave for 3.5 minutes.  Remove from microwave and flip again mixing it up a bit and repeat.  Make sure allll the colour is absorbed and throw into a pot (I have an old metal salad bowl) and let it sit till cool.  Your wool should  have a wonderful spotty texture in a variety of colours for fields or trees.

I only used about half the red brown and decided to stop there… Once it was done microwaving I flipped it over…
and poured on about half the moss green…back into the microwave and then same process with the full yellow formula and mixed up the wool well so that the yellow would overdye all the wool equally…resting in my metal bowl…

 et voila – from solid bright greens to spot dyed fall colours…

And now for a few pix of completed projects by others:

 While Diane was here for a visit over New Years she completed her SNOW (not SOW as I kept reading it) punch needle and put it in this vintage pan (for ashes?)…

 Jill was finishing her most recent Karla Gerard pattern (SLED) – love that sky…

Linda brought her beautiful completed rug of her own design to SBS – we are going to add a 2 inch wide border to it in navy wool…

Diane attached her Fall Frolic (one of my punch needle designs) to one of Vince’s Sheep boards (I do have a few of these sheep boards in stock!)… I love the way she finished this with a scalloped wool border…