In the past we have offered the service of dyeing wool to match whatever you could throw at us. Sometimes it was fun playing the matching game, a thrill to see if Shane could do it and to his credit, he’s been spot on most of the time, pardon the pun. It’s been a feather in Shane’s dyeing cap; he’s The Dye Guy, the wizard of wool, the magician of colour. But as more and more people request this service, and it is taking up a larger percentage of his time in the dye kitchen, we’ve had to rethink it.
Sometimes when matching a random sample, he hits it out of the park on the first try, but others have presented challenges. Most folks are happy with a close match knowing it will blend in well, but others expect miracles. One guy was rather fussy and turned down eleven attempts of matching his wool sample because he said it wasn’t a perfect match. I thought any one of them circled perfection and it would have blended in without a ripple. Shane liked the guy and kept trying to please him, which is a sweet quality as my son, but as an employee that was one heck-of-an expensive piece of grey wool. I pay Shane a living wage and on top of that, we now had this load of unwanted grey in stock that we could never sell in a month of Sundays so each piece had to be overdyed into something saleable, piling on the labour. All this just to produce a $19.00 ¼ yard of wool for the customer. That experiment cost me over $300.00 in materials and labour. We love that the client finally walked away happy, but it isn’t cost effective when trying to run a business.
If someone has purchased a piece of our dyed wool and lost or threw away the label, generally Shane can figure it out as long as it is a commonly produced wool in the shop, at least get it in the right ball park and take it from there but, and there is always a but, we have several thousand dye formulas, two recipe card holders jammed full, some not used as much as others so its like looking for a needle in a haystack. If it isn’t one of the frequently dyed colours, we have to treat it like a brand-new dyeing quest.
You’d think having bought the wool from our studio we could easily come up with a match but anyone who dyes knows that you can dye a colour one day and then try to match it the next, and all kinds of factors can interfere with the outcome. Water conditions, dye power measurements, thickness or thinness of wool as it doesn’t always come the same. Also, if time has passed since the wool was purchased, the dye powders have changed in intensity over the years. They are now quite a bit darker so the soft colours of the past don’t apply unless you alter the measurements by decreasing the dye powder, and of course its never a perfect reduction with spoon measurements. If there are four different colours making up the formula, a titch less of this or that is not straight math, it’s a time-consuming experiment of trial and error. Right now, he is trying to dye a 6 Value swatch that someone purchased from us seven years ago and the dyes are darker than they used to be. She wants one swatch, whereas we usually dye 8 at a time. So, he has to experiment with the formula to try to match it. The dilemma, if we dye one swatch for her it will cost a lot more with labour than the selling price of the swatch. The alternative is to dye eight of them and put them out on the rack under a new name even though they will be close to whatever it was in the first place. The discussions alone that have gone back and forth have cost more than the swatch is worth.
Then there is the wool that didn’t come from our studio. At the moment he has a dozen different samples waiting for his attention, sometimes only wool strips which makes it even harder to duplicate as he doesn’t have enough of the total picture of what the original wool looked like. Maybe it was as solid, perhaps an abrash, one strip doesn’t tell the entire story.
Some of the pieces of wool he’s been given, even though larger samples are clearly dyed with an inexperienced hand. It’s not always the tried-and-true Dorr wool either. I call it mummy gauze, thin as all get out, frays like a shedding pup and the quality of dyeing is not up to snuff, with white core and streaks of dye as if spilled across in splotches without any care or thought. Goodness knows what dye powders were even used with several to choose from and we are only dealing in MC and Jacquard. How can he match uneven dyeing over thin wool that’s full of white core? Does he even want too? He sometimes says he’s embarrassed to put that kind of product out.
And when trying to dye a match, SIZE MATTERS! We need more than a single #4 cut strip that’s been hooked and then pulled out, all wrinkled, fraying and devoid of its original form as if it’s been chewed and spit out. Shane, Deb and I all had a close look at this one piece and we all shook our heads. I don’t think I’d touch that one with a ten-foot stir stick, but Shane said he’ll give it a go. There are a lot of these strips on his desk right now from several customers hoping for their perfect match. It’s like the television show The Bachelor, all the ladies are hoping to get their rose.
Shane works on our website wool orders first, the custom items are completed when time allows. I came into work the other evening at 11:30 pm and he was stirring a pot trying to match some of the requests on his board. He is on reduced hours with COVID and bless him, is trying to fit it all in to keep everyone happy.
Imagine this. If he hits it bang on the first try that’s fabulous. But if it takes several tries, that produces basically wasted wool that we then have to overdye to make something to sell in the shop. If it takes hours to figure out just to sell a ¼ yard or a ½ yard piece of wool, it is not cost effective to do so. I am proud to say that Shane is good at what he does but there are time limits and too many variables to overcome to match a colour. Understandably, as his boss, if it costs me several hours of wages and materials to produce 1/4 or a 1/2 yard of wool it isn't worth the effort for the business. And, he gets pretty frustrated at times because he hates letting anyone down and once the stress builds, the fun and job satisfaction go out the window, that’s not particularly fair to him. So, we will only offer this service with conditions.
If you catch him when his order board is low, (not that it ever happens), and he’d like the challenge to come up with a reasonable match, I can live with that, but perfection will not be promised. It’s been my experience that when hooking, a close match blends beautifully, you would have to be off dramatically before it would stand out or clash.
If you wish to submit a sample for review feel free:
- It has to be a large enough sample to get a feel for the colour, a 1” wide segment should do, or 10 cut strips that are flat and have never been hooked that can be laid out together. A solid piece is always best as the strips create shadows along their edges.
- For a spot dyed wool, we need an even larger sample, not strips, only a flat piece of uncut wool at least two inches wide.
- Understand that a good match might be difficult and if it is, there will be a fee depending on the length of time it takes. That can be discussed with him or me prior to attempting the match.
- Expect a wait time as our regular orders will take precedence.
- Shane might turn down your request if he feels a match is too convoluted and will take too much of his time.
If purchasing wool from our studio, to ensure more will be available in the future, keep labels so we can easily produce it.
To avoid disappointment, buy enough wool to cover your project in the first place. If you like working with a particular colour, buy more to cover your need and the rest can be in your stash for future projects. If you penny pinch it might cost you more in the long run when you have to pull out what is already hooked because you can’t buy any more of it.
And last but not least. If you own a cutter it is always best not to strip all of your wool for a project at once. I have a rule that I only cut what I can use in a ½ hour session, which then forces me out of my chair to cut more strips. I tend to get seized up by sitting for long periods of time so this allows me to get up and stretch, perhaps get a drink of water, cruise by the fridge for a snack, etc. It also means that you won’t end up with a large amount of cut strips at the end of a project. Strips don’t store well, they fray and shed and require plastic bags which aren’t good as the wool should be allowed to breath. Having odds and ends of uncut wool allow for colour planning, using the four-fold rule. Take a piece of wool and fold it once and then a second time. This gives you four layers. The top of the wool surface is about the area you will be able to hook. If you hook high loops then you would need more and if you hook lower, less.
One of the first rules of thumb I was told when I first began rug hooking is to hook your loops as high as they are wide. I don’t follow this philosophy and joke that whoever made up this rule sold wool for a living. I hook all of my loops the same height whether they are a #3 cut or a #8 cut. It only makes sense when we use leftover strips of all sizes in a project and want an even surface on the rug. If we hook them all different heights, determined by the size of the strip, then the rug will be uneven looking.
Also, people tend to look at my work and think I use finer cuts but because I keep the loops low, they fill in better and appear a size down from what I am using. For instance, my #6 looks like a #5. Lower loops don’t show the edges from row to row so the shadows of each loop show less. Hooking higher loops show the shadows between them. I have a rug in my studio that was hooked in a #8 cut and the loops are so high that there is not only enough wool in it to do two rugs, but every loop shows its shadow as your eyes dance over the surface. I have a rug that is hung next to it that I hooked in a #8 cut and people think it is a much finer cut. There is no benefit to higher hooking. When getting walked on over time, all of those loops will smash down. The detriment to hooking high is the extra wool needed to complete the project. Hooking lower is a great way to keep the cost down, something we all like. The loops only need be high enough to cover the hole in the backing and to be able to remove the hook from the loop easily. But don’t go too low, or you will struggle to get the tip of the hook out. This of course is my way, not the highway. We all have our own technique, style and preferences. Yay individually!
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