A Little Yellow Goes a Long Way on Off the Wall Friday

Thank you all for so enthusiastically joining the We Do Not Care Club, Quilter's Edition.  I'm making a list for the next meeting.  Feel free to email me any additions you would like to make.  

It's been a busy few weeks with my deep dive into rug hooking continuing.  I managed to finish the little flower project:

Little Flower, Nina-Marie Sayre 8" by 8" 
Hooked Wool

I'm all happy with this.  The wool was super suspect, but it taught me that really you can hook anything that will make loops.  Also, it solidifies in my mind what kind of hooking I will eventually do. 

Also, drum roll please...I finished the grapes on my current project.  Looking at them now, I might go back and pull some out to do them again.  They are the kind of thing that you really need to see them in mass to see which ones aren't working quite right.  The whole thing with rug hooking is that YOU decide where the gradations go.  Like I said, some might need to be redone.  But before I do that, I decided to go on to the watermelon.  

The yellow is so much fun.  It's gradates from light to dark.  Watching the yellows blend so seamlessly together is very cool.  

Speaking of Yellow, 

Two weeks ago, our local historical society unveiled a sunflower field for its first season.  Unbeknownst to the general public, they made a deal with a local whiskey distillery that if the distillery would provide the seeds, the historical would plant the sunflowers at a historical farm they acquired.  The next thing you know, come August, we have 1.2 million sunflowers growing as far as the eye can see.  It certainly made a grand statement as the historical society intended.  Blessed as we are, its the next town over.  The nice thing is that the public was invited to visit and enjoy all the yellow. Thousands came to walk among the sunflowers.   Seeing it really took your breath away.  

The seeds will be harvested in September and given back to the distillery to make sunflower whiskey.  

I call that a win-win.  

Hooking the yellow this weekend, brought back to mind enjoying the field on a hot Sunday afternoon with my family.  It was the highlight of the summer for sure.

As always, it's the simple things.  

So, What Have You've Been Up to Creatively?

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A Finish - Rug #1 on Off the Wall Friday

 RUG DONE! And yes, my first real rug hook in the books.  Now when I say "done", I mean done hooking.  Hopefully, I'll get the edges finished up soon enough.  But to tell you the truth, there are so many ways to finish them, I haven't figured out which one I'm going to do yet.

That all said, I thought I would continue on with my habit of doing a self critique when I finish project.

Rug #1, Nina-Marie Sayre, July 2025
22" by 12", Hand dyed Wool on Linen, #6, #3 strips

Pros:

• Learned how to hook even loops

• 

  Store left over Strips 

  Learned how to hook graceful curves and circles
• The background is really interesting
• The negative space on the waves on the right is really working nicely (how cool is it that the negative space looks like a bird?)
  
• Good use of value, nice movement 

Cons:

• The palette needed some major tweaking (it's the orange)
• The design really needed another draft or two (see below)
• Two flat, needs more gradations
• There are two stories going on with this design

Okay, I preface this by saying the #1 objective of this piece was to learn how to hook nice even loops and curves.  That was success.  Also, I learned how to get a sharp point and how light colors show all the flaws in your hooking.  I also wanted to finish it because getting through your first big project is always the hardest. 

BUT, honestly, this design is a HOT MESS.  In my defense, I did it quicky - like 10 minutes quicky.  I wasn't really sure how long we had to design.  If I had done a few drafts I would have figured out a few things before I spent 2 months hooking it.  

See how the focal point is not in the right place?  This actually was set to be a diagonal composition.  Instead the focal point was too high throwing off the rhythm.  Also, that curve on the left needed some major help.  Maybe for fabric it would work  - and that's a major maybe - but for wool it definitely wasn't going to cut it.  Wool, by its nature is just that much more beefy .  

All of that could have been forgiven if that color palette wasn't off.  And why?

Background "S"'s 

It's telling two stories.  The calm of the waves and background is telling one story.  The accent of the circles is telling a whole other story.  So, it's leaving the viewer to say - hmmmm - there is something off and I'm not quite sure what it is.  Don't get me wrong. Tension in a piece is good but this is giving - "ocean nights with full moons on some freaky alien planet"...  Kinda like in some bad 50's B-Movie.  

Like a said a mess.  

But I made a rule...the goal was to learn how to hook and to finish it - not to pull out loops and fix what needs fixin'.  

I don't think it's a bad idea to set the objectives at the beginning of a piece and keep them in mind as you work your way through.  THEN do a self critique and ask - did you meet the objectives?

My answer to myself this time is ...yes!

 

Now bring on the fruit! 

So What Have You've Been up to Creatively?

(I'm linking up to Kathy's Slow Stitch Sunday)

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