The Color Lab: Three Ways to Delicious Darkness

Three basic designations of Delicious Darkness (left to right): primitive, primphisticated, and sophisticated.

TEXT AND PHOTOGRAPY BY WANDA KERR

When I first started dyeing, I lusted after effects I saw in other pigment-oriented art forms, like painting or quilting. I would see layers of colors in dark areas that delighted the eye.

I like to see this effect in rugs as well. There are many ways to achieve this. One type of dark mystery is not suitable for every style of rug. Let’s divide rug hooking up into three categories—not to define us, but to help refine our process of dyeing in interesting ways to enhance our projects.

• Primitive: Very simple, no layering, flat aspect, motifs are reduced to basic concepts.
• Primphisticated: Slightly more complex, involves some depth, more representational, motifs are slightly more accurate.
• Sophisticated: Intricate, with depth of field.

If we use very sophisticated dark wool in a primitive piece, it might detract from the pleasure and delight we find in simplicity. The opposite is also true: an area in a sophisticated rug filled with a primitive dark wool will be treated too simply.

THE PRIMITIVE DARK

Let’s explore some possibilities for a great primitive dark.

If we want to replicate the rugs of our great-grandmothers, we could take the most direct route possible with no dyeing. Simply look for several as-is textures and solids that are a close fit by value and color, but that just miss that bus by a bit. You don’t want your results to look too smoothly coordinated. Try using these colors just as they are in patches or wide stripes.

If you find a group of colors that are more widely dispersed and they need a little grease to get along, we can dye them or, as hookers around here like to say, “marry them” with dye. Let’s look at how we can use new or slightly used wool and still maintain the old-time look of clothes on their very last legs.

Say you want a dark background for this style of rug. Look for some wool that is already on the way to being darker. I like to use a four-value range on the value scale for this type of work: #4, #5, #6, #7. It saves on dye if you start out with medium values.

Note: I used Majic Carpet dyes throughout this article, but I encourage you to use the dyes with which you are most comfortable.

Method

Gather up different wools that fit into the “mostly” category; they might be mostly green, mostly gray, mostly brown. Just choose the mostly that suits your purpose from what you have on hand. Also use textures and little leftover bits that fit your chosen mostly.

Wet your wool as usual with Synthrapol or the wool wetter of your choice. Shampoo without conditioner will also work.

Choose one dye from your selection that will give the results you desire. Keep in mind what happens to certain colors when they are dyed with another; for instance, blue dyed over brown becomes teal-ish. You will want to add some black dye to deaden or some brown dye to dull according to what your dark areas need to look like. Make that judgment as you dye.

• Use about 1/2 tsp. of darker dyes to make your collected mostlys darker.
• Keep in mind that lighter dyes (like yellow) will not make a dark color.
• Blue-greenish wool overdyed with black will give you a cool black; for a warmer black, look for mostlys that are brown.
• Think about how bright your dyes tend to be. There are great online overdyeing charts for Rit Dyes if you need general advice about how colors influence other colors.

Old Stormy Recipe

Gather six pieces of random gray textures and solids equaling about 8 oz. or 3/4 yd. Arrange them from light to dark, and add them into the dye bath in that order. This arrangement will allow more dye to go into the lighter wool and less into the darker wool, keeping the marriage close in values.

These wools were overdyed with 1/4 tsp. Blue + 1/8 tsp. Black in a dye bath with plenty of room, with minimum stirring. Add 1/4 tsp. of citric acid after 10 minutes. When the water clears, rinse the wool well and dry.

Note: When you hook these types of backgrounds, try random, irregular sections of color hooked without planning.

Not a Black Cat Recipe

Let’s say you need to hook a black cat. Look for different colors in your wool stash that are mostly the same value. Let one be brighter, one be duller, one be warmer, and one be cooler. I used 1/4 yd. of fabric total.
1/32 tsp. Seal Brown
2/32 tsp. Black

Note: When hooking a motif with this kind of dyed wool, draw the cut wool from a basket in a random fashion with no rhyme or reason. The helping hand of a three-year-old to pass you the strips will really get you in the right mood.

THE PRIMPHISTICATED DARK

In this kind of rug, we want a little bit of fancy in our darks. To make them too saucy will be distracting; still, we want to show off some of our dyeing chops.

I’ve long said that a dyed iridescent wool will not make an iridescent hooked effect. In the case of a primphisticate, dyed iridescent wool is just what I prescribe for darks. Overdyeing brights with dulls creates such a pleasurable result. What is even more satisfying is to create a very bright spot dye and then overdye it.

Method

Wet 1/2 yd. of natural wool and crumple it in a flat- bottomed pan with sides. Pour over the following colors, one at a time. Add citric acid or vinegar to each color. Place the pan in the oven at 350˚F.

Warm Dark Blanket Recipe

• 1/32 tsp. Red Violet
• 2/32 tsp. Orange
• 3/32 tsp. Yellow + 1/128 tsp. Turquoise

Cool Dark Cave Recipe

• 3/32 tsp. Blue
• 2/32 tsp. Violet
• 2/32 tsp. Turquoise
• 2/32 tsp. Yellow over all in 3 cups of water

If either of these spot dyes appeal to you, please use them for your projects as they stand.

If you want them to be rich and iridescent darks, put them both in one big dye bath with 1/2 tsp. black dye. Or overdye them one at a time with 1/4 tsp. black each.

Use these results for anything dark in any type primphisticated rug.

THE SOPHISTICATED DARK

Sometimes you need the darks to do their work. They have to make depth, help lights shine, and make colors glow. They help draw attention to rest areas. What I really love to see is a wonderfully inventive dark in these rug types, one that sings and dances but does so with quiet and grace.

When I hook a sophisticated rug, I use wool like a paint box, carefully choosing each strip for the optimum effect in my rug. The separate pieces allow color choices to be precise.

Once again, I look for brights, and I’m back to suggesting textures, especially really ugly ones. When I’m saying bright, I mean BRIGHT. It is a treasure indeed when we can include these in our dye pots!

I’ve shown you before what a little knowledge of opposite colors can do. Now I’m going to show you what a delight it is to go to the left or the right of any opposite color to dull down and excite at the same time.

The photo above shows 1/4 yd. of five colors dyed as bright as possible. I did not have colors with enough intensity on hand, so I dyed 1/4 yd. of each color with the following recipes using a dye bath.

Here are the results of the first bright dyeing.

• 6/32 tsp. Blue
• 4/32 tsp. Turquoise
• 2/32 tsp. Red Violet
• 4/32 tsp. Orange
• 3/32 tsp. Yellow

You can see in the photo that I have my plaids in the middle, but after I took this photo, I soon realized that they were not bright enough, so I removed them before I went on to the next step. You could dye lighter plaids like I dyed natural wool to brighten them up a bit. Adding the texture of plaid here would be an added delight to the eye.

Once these wools were dyed and cool, I crumpled them and laid them in a flat pan as with the spot-dye method above. Then, I anointed them with the neighbor of their opposite color.

• Blue was flooded with 1/32 tsp. Orange + 2/32 tsp. Yellow.
• Turquoise was doused with 3/32 tsp. Red.
• Red Violet was blessed with 3/32 tsp. Brilliant Green.
• Orange took refuge under 2/32 tsp. Blue Violet.
• Yellow cowered under 1/32 tsp. Blue Violet + 2/32 tsp. Blue.

I then poured over everything a delightful wash of 3/8 tsp. Blue + 1/8 tsp. Black in 4 cups of water for a rich navy.

Once I got these dyed wools out of the pan, they still had a tad too many bright and shiny spots. So I threw them back into the stew pot with 1/8 tsp. Black, and finally, I was satisfied. The black deadened those high spots very well.

When I hook these sophisticated darks, I look carefully for the chance to use gradation, or the gentle transition through the color wheel, to make some areas of my dark patches lighter than others. I cut this wool carefully, and only as I need it. Sometimes I rip the wool right along color fault lines to access something I need for my rug. I use it like a painter mixes paint, moving from warm to cool through intermediaries of neutrality, traveling and making the viewers’ eyes run ahead to the next dark. I hook in patches, swirls, stripes, or dots—whatever my eye, rug, and heart dictate.

I wholeheartedly encourage you to use the dyes you have on hand. Make do with wools you already have; darks can be made from wool of any value and color. Experiment and try using the methods for one style of rug with the recipes from another. Note: You might think the colors shown are a bit too cool for your needs. That’s easy to fix. Where I said add blue, just add brown!

Let a dark event happen in your dyeing kitchen soon.

This article originally appeared in the June/July/August 2011 issue of Rug Hooking magazine.