Morning Glories for Rapture

Over the weekend, I decided it was time I dyed more wool for my Rapture rug.  Although I have been loving working on the hydrangeas, it is time to get started on another flower.  The easiest seemed to be the Morning Glory.  I did a search on Google for images so I could see a wide variety of Morning Glory blooms and decide what dyes I should use to achieve the colors I liked the best.

I decided I liked the ones that were blue/purple with white centers.  It seemed to me a casserole dye job was in order.  I folded the wool in 4ths across the narrow edge, to see how long a piece of wool I would need to go from the center of the bloom to the outer edge.  I think I will be able to get across the flower twice, so I decided to dye the center of the wool the color I wanted at the edge (Pro Chem Sky Blue), with the color I wanted moving toward the middle on either side (Violet), and then leaving both edges undyed for the white centers.

After soaking the wool and dissolving the desired dyes in boiling water, I spread about 1/4 of a quarter-yard piece of natural wool in the tray (leaving 3/4 of the wet piece sitting on the counter.  I poured a little water mixed with vinegar over the wool because I wanted the colors to start drawing up into the wool right away.  I spooned color over the flattened piece of wool in the bottom the tray and then  I used the back of the spoon to spread the color over the wool as far as I wanted it to go.  As I added the Violet color, I purposely mixed the edges where the colors met as well as sloshing a bit of color over the Sky Blue.  



When I was satisfied with the color I got, I folded over another bit of wool, adding a little more dye and spreading the colors around with the spoon.  I repeated this two more times until the whole quarter-yard of wool was dyed.  Some of the layers got more dye than others.  This will work out great because I will want a variety of values to work with as I move from bloom to bloom.  



I thought I might want some more solid pieces to use around the edges of the flowers, so I dyed another piece of wool with that in mind.  Again, I made an effort to make different values, but with the same value running in vertical bands. 

I only dyed 2 quarter-yard pieces because I have no clue whether I will like them until I start working with the wool on my rug.  I can’t wait for it to dry so I can see how it works up!

Pro Chem Sky Blue – 1/8 tsp. in 1/2 CBW
Pro Chem Violet – 1/8 tsp. in 1/2 CBW
(I also used some Pro Chem Brilliant Blue I had left over from another project on the edge piece—just adding what I thought it needed.  Why?  Just to make my life more difficult if I want to replicate it in the future).