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“Dyeing Around the Wheel in 68 Colors” Workshop with April DeConick

Dates: 2 Day - Wednesday & Thursday, August 15 & 16, 2012 Time: 11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. Class Fee: $160.00 / Members $148.00 Kit Fee: $100 or $139 (see description below) - payable to teacher at the beginning of class Location: Founder’s Hall – Stage Center & Kitchen  April’s Website: www.redjackrugs.com Description: This class will transform your rugs. Students will have the opportunity to study with a master of dyeing and color, splitting each day between the classroom and the dye kitchen. April will take students into the dye kitchen and demonstrate Palette DyeingTM basics and techniques from her best-selling book, The Wool Palette: A Rug Hooker’s Guide to Dyeing Your Own Color Palette of Wool. April’s specially crafted dye procedures will be demonstrated step-by-step, so that you learn how “easy” it is to create 68 colors from the three primary dye formulas. She will demonstrate 8-value jar dyeing, crock pot dyeing, and mottled dyeing.  In the classroom, April will cover lessons on color theory and the color wheel. Students will experiment first with paint and brushes and then start hooking the Glorious Color Caddy design. The hooked design will serve as a both a learning tool and handy reference for the color and dyeing theory you will learn in class. The Caddy can be hooked in any cut and then made into a 20”H x 14”W x 6”D tote bag (size does not include handles). April will show you how simple it is to either hand or machine stitch the side seams of your hooked piece to complete the tote bag (with handles and a hooked front and back), which is perfectfor carrying your cutter and hooking supplies. April created Palette DyeingTM so that rug crafters, like painters, would have a full range of colors in every value and shade possible. It is a dye process conceived from the point of view of a painter who mixes all her colors from three primary colors (red, yellow, and blue).  But here is the catch.  This process is not only about creating the 12 colors on the color wheel from the three dyes; it is about learning an easy way to mix 68 colors from three unique dye formulas for red, yellow and blue. April will provide you with recipes for these Starter Palette formulas, as well as tips for creating your own three formulas if you want a more customized color palette. It may sound complicated, but April will make it easy, interesting, and fun, and give you the confidence to start filling your wool closet with your own beautifully dyed wool. Level:  Students who register for this workshop will need to have: Basic Skills – students must have basic rug hooking knowledge & experience. No prior dyeing knowledge or experience is needed. Kit Description: Art supplies (palette plate, paint brush, acrylic paints, cup), dyeing demonstration materials, Starter Palette dye formula recipe cards, dyed wool swatches, Glorious Color Caddy pattern, hand-dyed Dorr wool to complete the project, full-color booklet with instructions on assembly and finishing the easy-sew tote bag, and the book: The Wool Palette: A Rug Hooker’s Guide to Dyeing Your Own Color Palette of Wool. (Students may pre-order the book ahead of class or bring copies that they already own and pay $100 for the kit on the day of class.) Students Need to Bring: Basic hooking supplies: a frame, scissors, cutter, cutter blades (in the range of sizes you prefer to hook in), hook, a pencil, paper, and dye aprons. Students should bring the Glorious Color Caddy pattern on linen backing to class. (April will send students the pattern and transfer instructions in advance and give you a choice of rustic red, blue-gray, or eggplant colors to personalize your design.) Students who do not wish to transfer the pattern themselves, may pre-order a hand-drawn pattern on Dorr primitive linen from April for $50.  Bio: April DeConick has been rug hooking since 1995. Since then, she has experimented with form, color, and texture, trying to push the boundaries of traditional rug making. She developed a dye process which allowed her to reproduce colors with consistency and create a signature color palette unique to her rugs. The dye process is just like a painter blending paints on a palette in order to achieve a tint, tone, shade, or value. Using this dye process, April filled her wool closet with all the colors in the color wheel, eliminating the need to every worry about whether or not particular wool she purchased would work in her rugs. Two of her rugs have been featured in the Celebration of Hand-Hooked Rugs IX and XXI.  In 2011, her rug, Alexander, won the People’s Choice Award for the Theme Challenge exhibit at Sauder Village. She has authored numerous articles for ATHA Newsletter and Rug Hooking Magazine and writes daily about rug hooking on her blog Red Jack Rugs which hosts the popular Ten-Minute Challenge. April wrote and published the book, The Wool Palette: A Rug Hooker’s Guide to Dyeing Your Own Color Palette of Wool, after developing her Palette DyeingTM technique so that rug artists would have available a full range of kinship colors in every value and shade possible. Specialties: Dyeing, color, design, impressionist and abstract styles, human and animal portraiture, and hooked dolls. [return to workshop listing]

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