Hook a spiral chair pad with me – Part 3

I can’t wait to finish my spiral hooked piece. I love the movement in the hit or miss. And even though we are using neutrals, there is a lot of color in the piece. I often dream of what I will do with my hooking before it is even done. And I want this piece on the table or up on a wall. That being said, I had better finish it! I tend to be a fast rug hooker, and when I am excited about what I am working on I can’t pull myself away!

In part two I showed you how to add the rest of the hit or miss guide-lines, and you may have already begun to hook them. I am sure that your project looks different from mine as you have your own personal wool strip selection to choose from. And no doubt there will be your color favorites to pick from. So let’s continue hooking the hit or miss shapes within the spiral, noticing how the colors are working together.

Here is an odd shaped spot that I am filling in with rows that are getting shorter and shorter as I go. Sometimes I twist the direction of the loops to make a line look more graceful, leaving loops on the diagonal at the beginning or end of a row to make them fit into the area around it.

Another name that I give to neutrals is chameleon colors. And by this I mean that they seem to magically change depending on the context you put them in. One time a wool can look gray in a rug, but then hook the wool in another place with other colors around it and it can look blue. Have you ever noticed this optical effect? The more you learn about color, the more you are able to predict this wonder of color.

On my frame I usually pile strips around the top edge so that I can just grab them. And the light is really good on my frame so I can see how these colored strips relate to my hooking. I know this may look like a mess, but it is organized enough to my eye!

I love the reddish brown splashes of color in the center of my spiral. But I don’t want to over do it with such a strong color. So I am choosing to keep the red sparsely sprinkled throughout the design. I also don’t want the red rows of hooking to look like one continuous line that cuts across the spiral line. So I will make sure that my beginnings and  endings of each one of the red rows are far enough apart so that they don’t read as one long line. I will take this same care with any other strong or noticeable colors.

Here I am placing a strip where I think it should go, seeing how much it contrasts with the rows of hooking around it. It is still kind of early on in the scheme of things to do much pulling out and changing things. I will hook some more and make a color assessment when most of this small piece is done.

I am also adding more neutral colors in the purple-gray family. And I am scouting for some more camel colors. Camel is light enough to contrast with lots of other choices in my strip collection.

Thinking about the edges of the circular design, the next step would be to hook all around the edge to hold the shape of the edge. I am going to hook a single line, and not in my darkest color.

I think I will use wool that is step lighter in value, a medium-dark charcoal gray color. That way my spiral line will look more special and unique. I like any border row I hook to lead the eye back into the design. A way to accomplish this is to avoid the specialty colors within your design and to use colors that are more subtle.

 Hooking the borderline makes it easier to fill in rows of hooking up to it, kind of like a coloring book drawing keeps you in bounds. And all of those row ends are neatly contained.

I am going to post more directions in a few days to give you time to finish most of the hooking. And then we can look at our designs and see if we should make any changes before we complete our piece.

Until next session, keep hooking ~ Karen