Mala Jones, Pumpkin with Crow
I taught a class at Pat VanArsdale’s last fall. Mala wanted a sunset/sunrise background behind the pumpkin and crow. I got busy in the dye pot. One way to dye a sky for a rug like this is to dye it all in one piece, but that will limit your control. I decided to dye the wool in separate pieces. I used a spot dye method even though some of the wool is just one color. I mingled some of the adjacent color into part of the wool to make the transitions easier. Mala did a great job with the hooking. We used one of my favorite techniques for night skies and that is to outline everything with a lighter color. In this case, we used the color from the bottom of the sky, yellow. It gives a wonderful glow around the objects and helped us to define the crow. We added a horizon line just to anchor the design, hooking the ground in a dull color.
Pattern: Old Orchard, “Pumpkin Harvest”, by C.B.K., 2001.
Pumpkin with crow displayed
When I asked Mala if I could post her photograph, here’s what she said:
Yes! I would be happy for you to share the picture of my rug. As far a info goes it is an Old Orchard Primitives pattern I forgot what the name of it was. I called the lady I bought it from and she didn’t have any info either. She thinks she got this pattern from Nancy Blair with some other patterns at some point in time. It is 21×25. This is the 2nd time I have been able to attend a workshop at Pats, she is a well organized hostess and try’s to anticipate students needs. Cindi you are a great teacher and very willing to share your knowledge. One of the things I really enjoyed about your teaching method was that you drew a picture of what you were trying to tell us to hook, that made it better than just telling us. I have started going to Nola’s in StLouis and I would take this rug to work on at her hook-ins and the women there really liked the color plan. Who knows you may get one of them as a student some day because of my rug. Have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Mala
[student]
Arlene- Yes, that piece is prodded. The pattern is Stenciled Roses from Cactus Needle. I added the border.
For the curious, you can see the rug here.
Oh my gosh, I LOVE your stenciled roses. Is that all proddy? It is absolutely gorgeous!!!
@Barb- I’m working on a solution. The problem is more programming skills than anything else.
@Trisha- Hook just a few each time you sit down to hook, then move on to something that excites you. You don’t have to hook them all at once. Small steady progress will get you there.
Cindi,
Thanks for the tips on hooking the sky. You are a wealth of information and a true gem. I just know Pat from emails and a pattern of hers I still need to finish. She has been very kind to me. The sky was very hard to do on it. I just need to go back and finish the lettering. I hooked them first in a dark color and need to go and take it out and hook the lighter wool. It’s a UFO and needs to get closer to the top of the stack, I just hate lettering!
Love your site. I can understand your not allowing pictures and patterns on your site to be copied but I would love to save your text info to my aol favorites. Since I can’t right click to hi-lite the text and put it on notebook or wordpad, do you know how I can get around this? Would it be possible to only protect your pictures and patterns and allow copying text to another site so I could save it? As you can tell, I’m not great on working with my PC. The background on pumpkin with crow is wonderful.