Designing and Hooking

The day has finally come for showing the Forest Secrets pieces.  Sunnie Andress on Rug Hooking Daily is the originator of the challenge.  The elements that were to be included were a rock, a ring, and something royal purple.

My first thought was to design something using the small things that go on on the forest floor.  What would be on top of the rock and what might be under the rock.    I liked the idea of the small hidden underground life of the forest.  After trying to draw it in a form that would be a decent rug design, I decided that would not work.

The toad seemed to be the best bet, so I filled in around him with some leaves and acorns.  I wanted to make a rectangular rug with the spray of oak leaves repeated around the border, but it didn't look right.  Then I thought of a circular rug with lizards around the border.  Another not great idea!  Finally I decided on a border of moths.  Toads like to eat moths!  And then I added the salamander for my purple thing.

The lovely golds and rusty browns of the IO moth were just the right colors.  My first wings did not have enough contrast, so I overdyed with a light solution of rust.

LaterI took the light purple out of the body and used it as an accent in the lower wings.

Next I did the toad because I thought he might be difficult and I wanted to get him over with!

Not as scary as I thought.  Later I took out some of the tan on his face and put in some accents of the light purple.

An all purple salamander looked too, well.....purple.  Decided to use some of the rust to tie it in with the moths.

 I had showed the dyed background on an earlier post, but will put the pictures here to show how different it looks before it's cut.  Closeup you can see the blues and greens in the hooking, but from a distance it looks black.

I forgot to mention that this rug was hooked in a #4 cut to get the necessary detail.  My backing is monks cloth.

I saved the really troubling part for last.  I had dip dyed the colors for the leaves and shown the results in an earlier post.  I'm not the greatest at this kind of hooking.  I started with the leaf to the bottom left of the rock.  It worked pretty well.

I had to take out some of the rock hooking and make a darker outline behind the leaf to make it show up better.

The large leaf was more difficult.  When I got in close to the veins, I discovered that another graduation of color was needed.  I don't want to have to dye anything else!!!  So I stuck in some darker green.  Not very effective!

In desperation I tried the light purple and it was just right.

The finished rug is 27 inches across.

Happy Hooking!