Dye Wool

I am getting ready to hook a Santa coat and I want his coat to be hooked with a variegated red with multiple shades of red. I don’t have any wool like that and I have been dying to try dyeing in a restaurant buffet style pan I recently found at my local Amish store. […]

Because I was completely out of any striped wools to use for a background on a rug hooking project, I decided to try tie dyeing some wool. I tried two different methods of folding the wool to see what I would get that might work well for my hooked rug. Watch the Video: Tie Dye […]

I enjoy experimenting with dyeing felted wool for rug hooking, backing punch needle projects, and applique projects. When we harvested our carrots from the garden earlier this summer, I remembered reading in one of my natural dye books that carrot tops make a good dye. Here’s a look at how I used the carrot tops […]

When hooking the new George and Martha Washington rugs, we had enough skin tones wool for George’s face, but not enough for Martha’s face. So I decided to do a few different dye baths in search of the perfect hand dyed skin tone wool. I started with natural colored felted wool and used the dyes […]

I didn’t have any wool just the right color for the nose and cheeks on this hooked rug of George Washington. Everything was just too bright for his face. So, I overdyed some wool worms to use for this rug hooking project. Watch the Video: OverDye Wool Worms: After I removed the wool worms from […]

I have a lot of solid wool fabrics from my days of thrifting wool garments. Sometimes, a solid wool is just what you need for a rug hooking pattern. More often, though, a mottled wool is a better choice for my style of rug hooking. The mottled wools can give the hooked rug more of […]

I have recently had questions about making commercially dyed black wool look more primitive. When thrifting wool garments, black skirts seem to be very common. It is hard not to scoop them up when you find them, but there is only so much solid black you need in your rug hooking and wool applique projects. […]

I started with some natural colored felted wool and dyed it with orange dye. It turned out to be a very vivid orange – think orange vest on construction workers vivid. This would definitely not work for my pumpkin punch needle kits so I over dyed the fabric to tone down the vivid wool. Watch […]

I have some wool fabrics in my stash that aren’t colors I will use in my rug hooking or applique projects so I am going to overdye them to come up with a color that I can use. I have a lot of navy wool from back in the day when it was easy to […]

I ran across some Rit Color remover in the clearance section at a store and decided it would be fun to try an experiment using the color remover on some wools that had been reclaimed from old clothing. My mom has quite a stash of recycled wools that she uses for her rug hooking projects. […]

Today, I am going to show you how I hand dye wool  using Cushing’s powdered dyes. Hand dyeing wool allows you to create the colors you want for your projects.  You can create solids or a  mottled, blotchy fabric which will give you more depth and movement  in your wool appliqué and hooked rug pieces.   […]