Here is more information about my rug in progress from camp and some of my hooking decisions and reverse hooking issues.
By the time camp ended I was this far along (immediate photo below) on the rug and had just finished adding the dark area (rock ledge) where Gracie and Piper are sitting. The wool I used for this part of the rug looked good in contrast to Piper's dark little behind when you saw it up-close. But this is one of those lessons learned: stand back from your rug. Once the rug was in the distance there was not enough contrast between Piper and the dark ledge. You can't always tell if there will be enough contrast until an area is hooked because your eye is distracted by the lighter color of the linen around your motif area. So yes, I do reverse hook often to achieve the look I want in my rug.
To avoid reverse hooking this entire area, I first tried my "peeping" trick to place a narrow cut of light wool between his left leg and the dark ledge wool (you can sort of make this out in the photo - the narrow light line). It adds just a slight separation of the similar colors, but in the end, not enough in my opinion. Sometimes this technique will work, sometimes it won't. In this case I felt the contrast was still insufficient. In the picture below the contrast looks like it
may be sufficient, but it wasn't when you saw the rug in-person from a distance. Corgis have the cutest butts, and I am capturing the world famous corgi butt here so it must show up or part of the charm is lost. So I decided to reverse hook this area.
Upon returning home from camp I spent several hours last Sunday to reverse hook this background area and I will turn some of the dark wool into a rock rather than a ledge. Here is the result of this change but my rock is not finished yet. You can see how much more Piper's rear stands out now.
Here is the same area as of later this week with more of the foreground re-hooked. What an improvement?
I have been working on filling in the field around the sheep and continuing with the bottom of the rug. Here are some closeups of the field around the sheep to further the discussion I started in the previous post. I am combining the use of warm and cool colors next to each other in this area of the rug. When you put a warm next to a cool you get contrast. Truthfully I cannot explain this to you as I'm trying to figure it out myself and understand the technical aspects of it from a color planning theory. I have combined a sage color green (blue green cool) with an olive green (warm) and a neutral taupe tone wool to help merge the cool and warm together. I think it's working (but you are free to disagree with me). I have circled the area where these wool fabrics meet.
Here is a picture without the circle. Yes the sheep are sort of "blobby" I know. But this is the way they are in the original rug and it adds so much charm. See me? Little Black Sheep? Isn't she cute?
In my next post I will share some of the decisions I have made about Piper's face and the transitions it has been through.
