Its All About the Rugs

As the first week in June approaches, life progressively becomes more about rugs and rug hooking and rug hooking wool, and rug hooking patterns…well, you get the picture. I really love going to Cambria Pines Lodge for rug hooking camp!

I finally really finished the rug. I finished the border with not a scrap to spare. I had to un-hook one row from the top to finish one side! And then I found a nice green wool at the little local yarn shop, and finished whipping the edge with one yard of that yarn to spare! I am so glad I put the border on the rug. It is a very busy rug, and the border kind of contains it, and calms it down a bit, I think.

Here are the other two rugs I recently finished and will be able to share at the rug show. I’m pretty excited to have three rugs to share this year. Of course, they were not all started this year, but they were finished this year 🙂

In case any of you are close by, a rug show is held on Wednesday afternoon, June 8, at the Cambria Pines Lodge, and is open and free to the public. There are always some wonderful rugs shown–it would be worth the trip if you are interested in rug hooking.

Then, I had to move on to my next project. The teacher I chose, Donna Hrkman, specializes in portraits, both human and animal. I never thought I wanted to do a portrait, but I admire this teacher’s work a lot. Then I remembered I had seen a quilt I really liked in Houston, and I thought I would really like to try to do a portrait of Noah, the BIG WHITE DOG, using the color like this artist did on this polar bear quilt.

“Now You See Him” by Cat Larrea

But this was my favorite picture of Noah.

There wasn’t quite enough there to add the color/shading. So I found another picture that included his ear and his ruff.

 

And then I gave myself a good talking-to, and drew an amalgamation of the two. I started with a printed copy of the first photo, and then added to it.

I had to go to Staples twice to get them to blow it up to the right size, but finally got that done. It will be 21″X23″. THEN, I had to draw it on the linen backing for the rug. I got that done, and had a bit of linen left, and decided to make a fun improv project to work on in my spare time. The strips that rug hookers cut are called “worms,” and usually there are a LOT of worms leftover at the end of a project or two. I have an idea that newer hookers have more leftover worms than experienced hookers. Anyway, I have a LOT of worms. I sorted them into four piles: light, medium, dark, and extra dark.

And now I can make an improv project based loosely on quilt blocks just using the four shades. Very fun. I make myself NOT look when I pick the next worm out of the bag. That way there is more spontaneity to the finished project.

I’ll leave you with a shot of my quilt hanging in the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles. It was very fun to see my quilt hanging with all the other beautiful entries in the Northern California SAQA Inspirations II exhibit. The exhibit of Kaffe Fassett quilts alongside antique quilts was also wonderful. They included some of Kaffe’s knitting, which I thoroughly enjoyed seeing, since I knew about him from my knitting days.

Oh, and one last tidbit. I have been trying to take a class with Gwen Marston for the past year, but her classes are always filled, or they are too far away for me to attend. Last night I remembered that she had a class or two offered on iQuilt. I checked to see if I had a coupon in my email, and then signed up–$16.00 for two solid hours of classic Gwen Marston! I thoroughly recommend this class.

One Stitch at a Time

One stitch at a time–that’s all I seem capable of these days. But when you think about it, that’s all any of us are capable of, right? Whether by machine and very fast, or by hand and very slow, we have to take one stitch at a time. And isn’t that exactly what we love about our work with textiles, whatever they may be. The very fact that we can take one stitch at a time, and eventually end up with a masterpiece, if we will just continue on, is a miracle!

Lately, I’ve been taking one stitch at a time on my rug. I made a macaw in flight!

I made an owl.

I put him in front of a moon.

And then one day, the rug was finished. (In case you’re interested, I am still going to “tweak” that sunset section behind the elephants.)

Only, two friends (and myself) agreed that the rug needed a border. I found these wools, dyed a deep green/brown with a hint of burgundy, and they seem like they will work well. One thing about a border, I can work faster in a straight line! I will add the words “He holds all creation together” at the top, and the scripture reference “Colossians 1:15-20 at the bottom. The lettering will be done in that golden/apricot color that is the same color as the cross in the background.

In the evenings, I’ve been obsessively stitching away on this little piece. It became my travel project for the time I spent teaching in San Luis Obispo. I mentioned to one of the workshop attendees that I didn’t know what I was going to do with it. And she picked out a piece of fabric from my stash and mentioned using it as a background/frame. And now I know what I will do with it.

Oh, teaching–I thoroughly enjoyed my time teaching in SLO. The women in the workshop were delightful, and they seemed to enjoy learning and working on the projects that I taught. Is more teaching in my future? We will see, we will see 🙂

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