After several false starts…I have the background underway.

I began by starting some leaves at the bottom. I used a dip dye that I dyed for my hall runner, but I somehow goofed on it, and it turned out way too green. I like the colours for here, but not the hooking stye, so I will take it out later, and figure out a different way to hook it.

Then I decided to work here, and this is the first background block I did. The background is a gentle lilac spot dye. The leaves, a left over from my Emma Sue background.

I spot dyed the recycled wool on the left, with 1/128th tsp lilac ….much more interesting now….I find I no longer like to hook with a solid colour.

This chunk…has had several incarnations. Originally I hooked it with a left over flesh tone dip dye….the background pale, and the vines dark ….yikes…it jumped out and didn’t work at all. I changed the background to this mottled turquoise (originally intended for background on Hygieia….but it didn’t work there)…..you just never know when your dyeing goofs will be absolutely perfect. 

This purple/green spot dye seemed like a good transition to the greens I wanted to use in the next blocks. (this wool was another failed attempt to dye a suitable background for Emma Sue)

This section is done with 2 of the 4  lazy swatches I dyed in drab olive.

When I first dyed them…I didn’t think they would work at all.

So this is the progress to date.

I’ll confess to my dyeing experiments which haven’t worked…. there’s lots of re-dyeing ahead)

This is a lazy swatch done in raspberry….beautiful….but not for this piece!

This is a lazy swatch done in paprika….dulled done slightly, but still way too bright for the background.

 My two red lazy swatches.

I’ve mentioned Emma Sue several times, so here she is .

I had a really hard time dyeing a background for her…I think I went through nearly two yards of wool until I got what I wanted..but I’m making use of much of those mistakes in this piece.

Now it’s back to the dye pots to dull down the paprika and see if I like that….got to have wool prepared so I can hook while the super bowl is on tomorrow!