Those of you who read Gene Shepherd’s blog, or are members of the Internet Rug Camp, may have seen my inquiry for Gene’s advice on a background colour (s) for Hygieia. He suggested light green-grey-bluish colours, done with movement. (If you’d like to check it out…it’s in the archives under ‘inspiration’ at  www.geneshepherd.com)

Soooo…I visited the prochem site, and chose 6 new colours…mallard green, country green, ivy, sky blue, slate blue, and mouse grey. My first attempt, wasn’t too successful…

mostly because I made a mistake with the vinegar (didn’t put it in with the dye bath…then tried to correct it by pouring it on directly) as a result, the blue was too strong and too bright.

I overdyed this with ivy and country green with a toothpick of charcoal grey to help dull it down.

I don’t have enough to complete the background , but I think I’ll now dye a few pieces with just one colour each, and see how I like that to go along with what I have.

I’m chugging along with the gown,

and I think I will have enough of the golds and yellows, but I’m going to have to dye more reds. That will be a bit of work, since I used 2 different formulas over two colours of wool, then overdyed it all.

Fortunately I wrote down everything I did…so I just have to figure out how much wool I’ll need, and adjust the dye amounts accordingly….and hope they haven’t changed the chlorine count too much in our drinking water…so that I end up with approximately the same results.