A New Textile: "Split Circle"

Split Circle, hand dyed wool on linen, 12 x 10 in.

I wanted to make a companion piece to Red Bars, below, so came up with this composition. They are both inspired by Russian Constructivism. The big decision that I had to make about the hooking of this piece was whether to hook a circular line around the split circle, or to hook the perpendicular lines to the edge, as I did below with the white/black diagonal. A line would have made a smoother circle, but I chose to have stepped changes in the edge; I'm still not sure it was the correct decision, but I kind of like it.

Red Bars, hand dyed wool on linen, 12 x 10 in.

Split Circle detail

You can see the way the horizontal and vertical hooked lines meet each other in this detail; it's like bumping up against zigzag walls. I did try counting loops to make it fairly even from side to side, but I pretty much failed at that. Luckily these hooked textiles have some charm in their irregularity.