Hook a spiral chair pad with me – Part 5

Hopefully you have hooked most of your chair pad by now and are ready to take a closer look at your piece to do the all important evaluation. You can only do this when you are almost done as it is only then when you can see how it all comes together. Even though you may not be changing very much, fine tuning your hooking can make a huge difference and can pull your look together. In the close up above you can see my deep gray border row of hooking. I am happy with how it frames the piece without competing with the black spiral line. If I had chosen a wool that was too close in value to the spiral, it would have had the same impact and ultimately detracted from the specialness of the spiral line.

Here is my hooked piece. I am happy with the selective amount of deep reddish brown, as I used it in 6 or so rows. None of them seem to connect from one spiral section to another, which I think would look distracting. They are not distributed evenly or predictably which is good. It should all look like it happened. When I squint my eyes there are a few places where two lines start to blend together, but then the lines around those pairs do show up clearly. So there are no confusing blocks of color. The lines show up well. I am pretty happy with how it looks, but there a couple nit picky things that I would like to change.

One segment of the spiral line starts to blend in a bit. It is this black/yellow texture above. It is not bad, and I do like that fact that my spiral line is understated by that break. But I thought that it would look better if I took some of that line out and replaced part of it.

I replaced 2/3 of it with a dark purple texture which reads a bit darker, and I like it much better.

The blue/gray/natural wool line that it the first line of the inner central spiral bothers me. I want to change it to something not quite as light and bland in color. When I squint my eyes that line reads very light, the next two lines are darker, then the next one is back to very light, and then two darker lines, and then a third very light line… It is looking like a boring repeat, and right in the very noticeable center of the design. I can do better.

I found this gray/blue wool that was a tad darker in value and I already like it better. Notice that I did leave 4 or so loops of the old color there, as it harmonized with the line.

To the left is before, to the right is after.

Making those small changes has modified the design. Maybe it is hard to see on the computer, I don’t know. But for me, it took away what was distracting from my look, and helped my eye to gravitate to the overall effect. I love it, and that is the point that I want to get to in my hooking. It is all to please moi!

Tomorrow I will talk a bit about finishing ~ Karen