Talking About Textures: A Look at Over-dyeing Plaids & Checks By Gene Shepherd

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Scene 1: Welcome to this session of the Internet Rug Camp. Today we're going to be talking about textures, particularly about over-dyeing textures. I don't know anybody who doesn't like textures or who isn't always on the look-out for some interesting textures to use in their rugs.

For example, you can fill a motif like this with something solid, but it's more interesting to throw in a little bit of a texture. You can outline it with something solid, like I did here, and that's fine; but notice I like to go back and forth with textures as often possible. Even when I'm filling in and I just change to a little bit of a texture and a little bit lighter piece of wool, it brings a pop to the piece.

We love textures, and unfortunately we can't always find the right textures, so we need to learn how to over-dye them. And I thought it would be fun, in this particular session, just to talk about some of the possibilities and show you different ways that you can tweak textures to make them work for you.

Scene 2: Here are six different pieces of textured wool that I just happen to have laying around in my studio. A lot of people would be very happy to find any one of these textures, thinking, “Well, I can use them just the way they are” and you certainly can. But, unfortunately, I would like to get more out of my textures than just the way that they come. So, I thought it would be worth our time to just look at some different textures and see what would happen if we over-dye them in a variety of different colors.

Grey and white hounds-tooth: Obviously this generic gray and white hounds-tooth plaid from Dorr Wool is a standard, open slate. You can take this wool and do just about anything you want with it. I've dyed it red. I've dyed it pink. I've dyed it green, various shades of green. I think I've dyed it every single color of the rainbow that you can think of. It is nice to have a bolt of this on hand because I know it's good wool. I know that the white color is always going to accept whatever I over-dye it with, and that the gray is going to take on the color of whatever I am using, and that it's going to work together to give us nice shadows.

Light golden tan check with subtle green & gold little stripes: For example, in that Persian that we were looking at just a few moments ago, this is one of the gold textures I used to outline in that piece. So, this is a good bit of wool to have around because we know it's going to work for us.

Consequently, when I found this piece of wool the other day, I certainly bought some of it because it is very similar to this wool in that it is of such a light nature that it's going to play a very good host to almost anything that you'd want to over-dye this piece of wool with. And, again, it's very light. These nice little dark stripes—one is a kind of a green, one is a bit of a gold—they're going to be good hosts.

Now, of course, probably the easiest thing to over-dye it with is something that is from this general family but darker; and actually this would be much more useable to me than this piece would because I like the color. I like it having a bit of a spot on it, and I think it's going to be interesting. But, I was also able to make this, and just with a simple bath- I think I did about a yard at a time. I didn't stir it very much. I like it a little bit spotty because it's actually going to give me more texture by having some highs and lows in the colors. Here's another version of this. Again, it is so light that it easily accepts just about anything that you would put over it, and I really like the way this particular piece of wool works. I've dyed it in this color (blue). I've dyed it in pinks. Here's another version of it. You'd probably be surprised to think that it started out as this particular one, but I actually threw a piece of this in when I was doing one of my “Surprise Refrigerator Dyes,” and you can see, if you have seen that particular video—which, if it's not on the Internet Rug Camp right now, it will be soon—but I just threw it in with something else and it came out with all of these nice variations. Again, when I'm looking at a piece of wool to buy so I can over-dye it, I'm always thinking to myself, “Is it going to accept colors?”

Now, just one point of discussion. If using this natural just the way that it came, a lot of people would just throw it in the washing machine and let it felt up a bit and then start using it. I never do that. I always boil all of my wool in water with citric acid for an hour because I want to make sure that they're properly set. If I'm dyeing them, that automatically happens. The washing machine doesn't get them that hot. I don't know if new wool has been set properly or not, so even if I'm going to use it this way, I still treat it like I would if was going to dye it, by simmering it for one hour in water with citric acid. That way, I know for a fact that I'm not going to have any trouble with that wool.

Light teal, gold, rosy brown check: Well, here's another piece of wool that I really like, but it's sort of pushing the box a little bit because, obviously, it is not a blank slate like this wool is a blank slate and this wool is a blank slate. This is anything but a blank slate. And if you get a piece like this and you might be wondering to yourself, “What in the world can I use to over-dye that? I don't have any use for it in this particular way; just what can I do?” Well, let me give you just a clue. For example, what dyes go into the existing piece as it is? Well, obviously there's kind of a light teal color - a bluish teal. There's obviously kind of a gold color, and then there's this much darker brown. Now, I'm not big on browns usually, but it's kind of a rosy brown.

So, what I did when I started experimenting with this is I took a gold color that was a little hotter and more into my sense of color, and I actually think this is 122 Mustard (ProChem), probably about ½ teaspoon to a yard, and I simply over-dyed it with that. I knew that it would make the golden color a much deeper gold. I knew it would make the blue turn more into a green; again, blue and yellow make green, and so I've got kind of a yellowy-green here. And it also just deepened that little bit of a stripe that runs through there.

But, besides accentuating the gold tones already present in the tweed, you can also take the blue tones and accentuate them with a dye. And that's what I did with this particular piece, and I was really quite happy with the way this piece turned out. I especially like the little bits of purple that just sort of came up with the foam as it was being dyed; and, again, I can think of all kinds of uses I would have for this. The blue accentuated the blue; it toned down the gold, and it sort of deepened and turned that browny color into more of a rosy kind of a stripe. I just think that's beautiful, and I love the way this particular piece turned out.

Of course, the third color we talked about is this sort of brown color, and I've already told you I'm not going to want to dye that brown, probably, but because it's sort of a rosy brown, I thought, “Well, let's dye it with a rosy color.” And, again, it perfectly accepted this. My blues, with the addition of the reds, turned into a bit of a purpley color. The gold accepted the red and sort of changed to kind of a brighter red, and then the red color—while it's there and it's making the stripes, and it is noticeably different, particularly if you're closer to it—it just was accentuated and turned this piece into, well, something that I think is quite attractive. I actually have dyed this piece with a little less dye and a little bit brighter color of kind of a hot pink, and it actually turned out quite well, and I was very, very happy with this. But I don't think the average person would think that this came from this, but it did because I chose to accentuate colors already in the plaid.

In a way, it's sort of like marrying the piece in a different way. We talk about marrying things all the time. Anyway, that's how I was able to achieve that.

Blue-green and gold-yellow tweed: Here's another piece that I bought, and I do like this “as is.” I did boil this up for somebody the other day, and it's actually been featured in a 10 foot runner version of Grandma Rayl that's been featured on the Internet Rug Camp, and I used it just “as is,” and I paired wool to it. Some of it had a little wash of yellow-gold color because it's there, and I got some softer blue-greens, and that's how I was able to dye up other things to go with this. But, using our kind of formula that we talked about before, if you don't want to use it “as is” and you'd like to change it, well, over-dye it with some sort of a blue, which is what I did on this particular piece. And, of course, the blue turned the gold into a yellow-green stripe—and, again, it's not going to just knock you over because the color variations are rather subtle, and when you cut them and hook them, it's going to look totally different. However, in this particular scenario, I think it's made a piece of wool that will be quite lovely and have some surprise highlights and have various things going on with it.

On the opposite side or on the other side, I also took a much hotter gold and over-dyed it with the gold. Again, it just changes the way the gold looks, and it turns the blue-green into more of a greenish kind of a color. I can see this being very, very helpful in leaves and veins, and, well, just a variety of applications. And, again, it's not too stunningly different from what was already here. If you don't do a whole lot of dyeing, and you don't want to make a bunch of mistakes, it’s a safe thing to always go with the colors that are in there and then accentuate them by going different directions, and you can get some really nice things. By the same token, it wouldn't bother me to also over-dye this in one of my reds, because I know that it would turn this gold into more of a red color, and it would turn these blue- greeny colors into more of a kind of reddish purple, so I know that is going to work and be nice. I just don't have the piece for you today.

Blue tweed: Here's another piece. I like it “as is,” and this is “as is.” I can see all kinds of applications for it. But, again, I just wanted something that was a little bit different, because, even if I was going to use this in, say, some leaves, I would want some other things that I could throw in with it, so it looked different. And because there's not really different colors in here—you know, like 2-3 different colors in the other pieces that we talked about—I just experimented around by hitting it with some gold to see what it would look like, and I thought this turned out very nice. I like it, as well. And this is one I hit with a little bit of kind of a chestnutty color. Again, I don't usually do lots of browns, but this would look wonderful. These three colors, three versions of the same tweed would look wonderful in the same leaf. They could even be mixed in a variety of different applications and I thought they were quite pleasant.

It's really great fun—if you've got the wool, you've got the time, and you don't mind to experiment—to look at something like this and just think to yourself, “Well, I know if I hit it with yellow it's going to work because yellow and blue make green, and I know it will accentuate it. I know that the browns and those kinds of colors are going to work, and you can just try it. And, by the way, just for your own information, if you want to make a red darker, one of the colors that you can add to make the red darker is a green. That said, if I were to over-dye this with green, it would- Or with red, it would make the red deeper and I'm sure that I'd end up with a very attractive piece of wool, if I had done that.

Red, green, and gold tweed: Well, here is a piece of wool that has a lot of red in it, and I was talking earlier about how you need to boil it first —at least, in my opinion, not just wash it—use it “as is.” I want to simmer it for an hour to make sure those colors are set because I just don't always trust the manufacturer. Here's what this wool looks like once it's been set that way. Notice, it does change the color, makes it a little deeper, the color kind of bleeds in just a little bit, which lets me know that probably it wasn't set properly. I mean, it's just obvious that this has kind of bled out. So, you can see why I like to set all my wool in the pot, even if I use it “as is.”

Okay, here's another one of the situations where I over-dyed it with red. Again, I don't think anybody would think that that's the exact same thing, but it is. And this little bit of green sort of came out. See this sort of a purpley red. It illustrates my point about how red and green, when they go together, the green will deepen the red, so the dark stripe in here is the green. The red stripe is lost, and that's all happened because I over-dyed this particular piece with red. But, again, when this is cut and hooked, it's just going to be a nice, subtle, different variation, which I think will be attractive.

Here's another version of this particular thing, only this time I accentuated the green. And, again, the red stripe now shows up because it has made the red darker because I added green to this particular dye bath. And, again, it's not my favorite color in the world, but it is something that I think a lot of my students will like and will use, and, to me, it's a particularly pretty color; and I can see even using some of these colors together in the right kind of a scenario. What happened was, I got all of these different things out of the same- Or out of various pieces of wool, And, sometimes—now, I didn't do it in this case—but sometimes I would throw in a piece of this and a piece of the other one and maybe even a piece of this in the same dye pot, so, in other words, 3-4 different pieces of texture would go into the same dye pot and all would come out related but different. Now, these three didn't, but I do that all the time. I'll take four pieces of tweed. Throw them in the same pot, and obviously they're going to come out differently.

Well, the purpose of our session today is not to give you formulas, but just to give you an opportunity to think about tweeds; and when you see one and you think, “Well, gosh, I don't know if I'd ever use that because it's just not my colors,” taking it and changing it to give you something that's very interesting, so you can add it to your rugs.

Scene 3: I've enjoyed spending time with you today, as it's given us an opportunity to talk about texture. After all, we love what texture brings to our rugs. And just because we find one piece of kind of simple texture, it doesn't mean that we have to then be limited to that. We can take it and over-dye it in a variety of ways, and, well, there's several ways that we've looked at today, or at least colors and approaches we can take.

That just leaves me to the last issue: which one is my favorite? Well, it's hard to say. I really like this one, but then I like this one as well. And then there's just something quirky about that little piece because it's sort of an unexpected piece and, well, you know I can see bringing in this color, as well. You know, all those colors look nice, and then this one looks nice, too. Yeah, I think we're just going to have to get together, bring all of our textures and sit down and make a rug. Let's do that soon, the next time we get together on the Internet Rug Camp.

( 0:18:24) Transcription by Rebekah Fowler