Portrait Study- How to Organize Multi-Value Wool Strips With Ease

Organizing Wool Strips

It is necessary, in some projects, to have multiple values and many cut strips. Organizing the workspace is essential for success. In my Self Portrait Study, I already have 20 values of yellow. I need each one at the ready to begin hooking. This is how I organize everything and keep it organized.

First, upon finishing the dyeing and drying process, it is important to iron the wool flat. Wrinkly wool hooks wrinkly and can mean higher and lower loops or crooked loops. Loop placement is very important. That is a later blog.

While ironing, I tag each one of my values with the correct value number. Value 1 is the lightest. I use a sales tag with a safety pin on the corner of each piece of wool. Sometimes I designate dye formula amounts, or base wool color. It is good to know all of these facts especially if more of that value is needed. 

Lay the values one onto another to see the gradation. Adjust as necessary if one value seems out of place. This is the time to adjust for that. 

Now that the values are all neatly ironed and stacked in order of value, it is time to cut. I only cut 1 pass through my cutter of each value. I don't want so many strips that they can get jumbled together. In a close gradation, it is difficult to distinguish between values sometimes. With each strip cut, take a safety pin and attach it vertically in the upper third of the wool strip. Drape the cut strips through the pin and close it. Here is the 'parking spot' for the strips. You take a strip from the pin, and if it is not all used up, return the partial strip to the pin. This keeps all the values with their parent wool swatch. Lay the swatches with corresponding cut strips onto a plastic tote lid or other flat stiff surface, that way there is a mobile palette ready at all times. Reference the photo above and try it!