As I hook my way through the grapes, I've been watching video lessons at Cindi Gray's "Rug Hooking Journey". One of the chapters was this Little Flower pattern. Cindi designed this little project for those who wanted to do more than just a square as their first project. Originally, I skipped it - since I'm kinda of a "go big or go home" type of girl. Now though, it looked like a nice palette cleanser to the grapes.
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| The Little Flower, Cindi Gay |
Oh this looked fun! First, I pulled out the sampler pack of backings I had bought. It contained fat quarters (which in the hooking world is 18" by 30") of the four main backings rug hookers are using right now - burlap, monk's cloth, rug warp and linen. It seems that people have a variety of strong opinions of what backing they like. So far, I tried the monk's cloth and found it too loosey goosey for me. The linen I like because of the texture, slight smell and tons of little spots to put your hook. Next up....Rug Warp ... which is Cindi's preferred backing.
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| Starting the Flower |
I traced out the pattern which is about 8" by 8" and grabbed a hand full of reds, greens and browns strips. One thing I'm going to have to get used to is not having a full stash of wool at my disposal. I honestly don't want a full stash (since a ridiculously huge stash of cotton is enough for one woman), but I will need a "working" stash. Right now, I was blessed with a gifting of a small stash from a friend from John C. Campbell ... plus a hand full of scraps I bought at a local thrift store. (These I froze/sun baked several cycles to kill off any potential moth larva). In the thrifted wool I found my choices.
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| Putting in the Border Line Note to self: Next time just draw it instead of trace So it will be straight |
What's great about the exercise is that I'm finding out what wool felts up and is thick enough to hook nicely. Some of the scraps I used for the flower are so thin that they nearly wouldn't hook. Not to mention rug warp isn't as forgiving as linen having more of a set even weave to it. But little by little I got the rhythm, and the flower got hooked. One thing I liked was the messy texture of the looser thinner wool - it gave the flower this really pretty style. It's like you can't really tell where the loops are. I used bits and pieces of greens of conventional hooking wool so they have more rigid loops. Andddddd now, I'm working my way through the background.
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| What I got so far! |
One thing I'm learning is that all those years of piecing hand dyeds together for an overall effect wasn't wasted. I easily am reaching for strips to hook without much thought knowing instinctually they will in the end melt into one.
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| Another WIP exercise with little pieces all working together as one (I really need to finish this - it's got potential!) |
I wanted to thank everyone for the encouraging comments. It's so nice to have my own cheering squad.
So, while I've been playing with wool...
What Have You Been up to Creatively?
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