Christmas Cardinal

Christmas Cardinal, 10" x 17", #4- to 8-cut hand-dyed wool on rug warp. Adapted from artwork by Lisa Arkis and hooked by Cindy Irwin, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 2015.

When I met artist Lisa Arkus at an art show, I fell in love with her designs. I asked if she had ever considered making rug patterns from her work. She told me that she was asked to but she just didn’t have time. I was pleased when she gave me permission to adapt her work into patterns for rug hookers.

When I first started rug hooking I was intimidated by the thought of color planning a rug. It wasn’t until I discovered a color wheel that worked for me that I began to understand how colors work together. My favorite color wheel is Color Star by Johannes Itten. It is out of print and nearly impossible to find in English, but if you search online, it is still available in the original German. This color wheel features different templates that you can move around the color wheel until you get the colors you want to use. Each template is a different color plan: for example, complementary, split complementary, and so on.

The color plan for this rug comprises two different split complementary colors.

This article is from the November/December 2015 issue. For more information on our issue, check out our issue page.