Wild and Beautiful - Jan Haines

 

My design idea came from travelling along the Eynesford valley in Kent with husband driving and looking out at the winter hedgerows when all of a sudden the sun came out and the whole hedge lit up, the colours were fabulous.

The colours I used were many and they are the colours I saw in the sunlight that morning, the branches and twigs took on a purplish/red and the rose hips were like little light bulbs (I will always think of them as nature's light bulbs in future).  The lighter green grass on the bank in front of the hedge gradually darkened as the grasses grew up into the hedge.  It was a beautiful sight and there and then I knew I had my design.
I sketched the hedgerow on a small piece of paper, it looked OK but once it was coloured in I could see how it would work in fabrics.  I decided on the size and enlarged the draft on the photcopier.  I had decided to work on wool warp backing, so I traced off the design onto a piece of wedding veil  net (not mine I might add) and then onto the wool backing fabric.
The size of the piece was determined by my photocopier (it only enlarges to an A4 size) and as I wanted to get started I went with that size.
The materials I used was mainly wool fabric, some wool/acrylic mix yarn and also pure wool yarn and handmade felt.
The rug was hooked with a fine hook and when the wool yarns were'nt thick enough I used my hook to crochet them into a chain and then hooked them in. I had not done that before but it was helpful in keeping the colours working in between thicker cuts of fabric.  A lot of the fabrics I trimmed down to the size I needed as I went along.
The backing fabric I used was wool warp which was lovely to use.  It is like a woolly form of Monks Cloth.  It was easy to use and when it came to finishing off the back I crocheted around the edges close to the last row of hooking and folded the back over on the bottom edge and two sides and then folded the top edge over last and made a sleeve from it to run a dowel through to hang the work from.
I chose all the colours that I remembered seeing in the hedge at the time and gathered them all together and cut with my rotary cutter  a 1/4” to 1/8” so I had lots of little piles of fabrics.  I piled them all onto my cutting mat along with the yarns and the whole thing looked like an artist's palette.  I then started hooking, taking colours as I thought they would work – the main details were put in first as usual but the best bit was choosing which colour to put in next and what it would go next to etc.  I can sketch but always wanted to be able to paint like a real artist, I covered this with A level Art, but found I was better at the history than the painting.  This project made me realise you don't have to use paint to make a picture, wool is far more tactile and does'nt smell as much.