Swirl

Dimensions: 59" x 68"
Materials: #4- and 5-cut hand-dyed new wool on linen
Designed by Heirloom Patterns and hooked by Peggy Hannum, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 2014. Photo by Impact Xpozures.
Featured in: Celebration XXV

"Swirl was in my stash of of Heirloom Patterns in 2 pieces of old burlap. Thank goodness for time and progress. Now linen wide enough to retrace this on to one piece is available, no more hooking through 2 layers of backing and burlap selvages! For years I talked about Swirl but never got around to copying it. One of my students and friend, Helen Lynch, graciously offered to do it for me, perhaps tiring of my whining about it! Thanks to Helen, I was on my way with ideas I wanted to do in planning and dyeing. It had a 'swampy,' miasmic feel to it. I needed colors to blend but also excite. Thanks to past years with Nancy where I had learned so much about dyeing techniques, I was able to come up with what to do. I chose 11 different colors of wool, among them 2 shades of red, and soaked them together with soap overnight. Knowing that the colors, especially the reds would bleed into each other, I was not disappointed. I then made 8 value swatches of each color dyed with the same formula; they are all different, but they blend and often have subtle tints and streaks of the red."
- Peggy Hannum, Celebration Hall of Fame 2018