Sewing group project -- Holiday!

These rectangles have been waiting for completion since mid-2013.  It's another project from my fabulous and crazy sewing group.  Many of us have chosen the holidays as the theme of one of our projects.  I decided to do trees.  It could have been a single branch or even just the top, but everyone chose to do a complete tree.  The background is hand-dyed (by me) wool.  The thin black is velvet ribbon and the wider black is black wool.

Here are some close-ups.  Mine is in the upper left.  I used some rug-hooking techniques and various shades of green wool.  The tree is proddy using small strips of the wool.  I cut the ends at a point to mimic pine needles on branches.  The bottom is some glitter-infused velvet that I cut using a wool cutter and hooked just as you would wool in a rug.  The strands of metallic pop out randomly -- a nice bonus I didn't expect.  As usual, mine is one of the heaviest pieces!  An occupational hazard of using wool as your medium, I guess.

Next across is Anne.  Anne of the amazing embroidery and strategic use of sequins.  This design has great swirls and crystal and sequin accents.  I'd know it was Anne's a mile away.  Each year at the stocking contest, Anne's stocking is silk with fantastic appliqué and embroidery.  When her oldest daughter was dancing ballet, Anne did headpieces for the Akron Ballet.  Her attention to detail is unmatched.  I've learned many things from her over the years.

Heinke's is next.  Heinke is the master of never settling for the same old techniques.  Over the years I've seen her try almost anything to get the result she wants.  This piece uses wash-away stabilizer as a backing.  She free stitched using various green and metallic threads, loosely in the shape of a tree.  Once the stabilizer is washed away, all you have is the thread.  Pretty cool.  The red background is hand-dyed wool and she used some metallic thread to do a running stitch frame on the blue background.

Katie is another artist whose work I can instantly recognize.  She is a master of collage using found objects, odd bits of sewing supplies, and vintage materials.  This piece is classic Katie.  I love feather trees and this is certainly a great example.  Each tier of branches has a slightly smaller size of ornaments as you move up the tree.  Katie owns a fantastic clothing store in Hudson.  I wonder how many of these little bits started out as trim on clothing that Katie kept for her personal use?  Her house is full of eye candy.  Mini collections of embroidery thread and religious icons;  small framed bits of art from friends, textile fabulousness.  

On to the bottom row!  This one is Barb's.  Barb and Anne are sisters and our sewing group meetings always have an interesting depth thanks to having sisters in the mix.  Watching the two of them makes me miss my own sister who lives much too far away.  Barb is also a master of embroidery.  Our first year as a group, Barb did squares of silk with the most beautiful bird on a branch.  Each one exactly the same and so precise it would make you cry.  My embroidery skills will never come close to Barb's.  Her tree is airy and light and lovely.  The tiny beads look just like lights and I love how the trunk curves.

Beth is next.  Beth and Heinke are the two in the group most likely to use fabric.  Beth quilts and does massive amounts of sewing for her daughter and son-in-law.  Mark Cesarik is a fabric designer with great talent and Beth definitely makes the most of his creativity with her creations.  But, this tree uses new and vintage Christmas fabrics, probably bark cloth.  Beth hoards bark cloth of all types.  One year we used her bark cloth in a project.  On this tree, I love the second tier up from the bottom.  The large ornaments add so much movement to the tree.  Oh, and Beth is Jewish!  Pretty great stuff from someone that doesn't even celebrate Christmas.

Two more!!  Next is Angela.  You'll have to look closely at this tree.  The tiers are made up of ribbon and on that ribbon is printed pictorial instructions for knitting!!  How perfect for me!  When she gave this to me, I immediately found out where to get that ribbon and I ordered some for myself.  The creamy white and the black printing are the perfect foil for the red stitching.  This also shows why I chose that muddy blue for the background.  Almost every color looks great against it.  It's neutral without being boring and I love it so.

Last but definitely not least is Kathy.  I will take a tiny bit of credit for Kathy using wool in many of her designs.  But, beyond encouraging wool as a material, I obviously cannot help Kathy with anything else.  She is a master needlewoman.  This piece is wool appliqué plus embroidery.  Look at the little bird hitching a ride on the tree as Santa drags it away.  Look at the laces on his shoes!  Seriously fun and fantastic.  I put this piece at the lower right so it would lead the eye off the work.  

The entire piece hangs above the French doors in my house.  I normally hang my sheep there but now I will switch out the sheep in December in favor of my fabulous Christmas tree hanging.

S is for Sunflower -- and screening

I think I've spoken of my sewing group before.  There are 8 of us and we do creative projects for each other during the year.  We've been together for 7 or 8 years and the things we have done are spectacular.  For the first few years, we had specific guidelines that everyone followed.  One year was color, one year was theme, etc.  The color year I chose blue and brown and asked for 6-inch squares in those colors.  The techniques range from quilting to embroidery to knitting to everything in between.  I think I'll do some blog posts in the next few weeks about past creations.

This year my personal theme is Sheep and I gave everyone a 9-inch square of hand-dyed wool with the instruction to do a sheep.  I've received 4 so far and they are great.

This sunflower mat is for my friend, Kathy.  Her theme this year is for all of us to use leftover screening from her porch repair and to use the screening as the base fabric for our creation.  The only other stipulation was that we incorporate the letter "S" in the design.

The minute I saw it, I immediately thought of rug hooking.  I tried out a few strips to see what would work and settled on a #6 cut.  Because the holes are so small, I had to use a small hook that I picked up at a garage sale one time.  Not my beautiful hook that I use most of the time.  And, once I tried out the hooking, I realized that this was not going to be as pleasant and relaxing as hooking on linen.

Screening is hard plastic and has zero give.  Even if I wiggled the hook around, I couldn't get the little hole to be very big.  I was also using a fairly loose weave plaid for the main color of the mat and the loose weave did NOT want to be cut in a narrow #6 cut.  The green fabric was great -- tightly woven and a bit felted but still very flexible. 

The screening scratched my hands and, because I had to use a hoop instead of a traditional frame, my pulling action was very awkward.  I did not enjoy.  I felt like it took twice as long because I had to grip the frame while I pulled each loop through.  The screening was also difficult because it's black.  So, I had to use some special transfer paper to trace out the "S" so it would look right.

The smartest thing I did, though was to hook a small circle at the top of the stem as a placeholder for the proddy technique I used to make the petals of the sunflower.  This worked perfectly and as I prodded the petals, I gradually removed the small circle. 

All in all, I like how it came out, but it was a pain.  However, below is the project Kathy did for me a few years back when I had everyone do a vegetable.  The 8 vegetables hang in my kitchen at our lake house and they are all fabulous.  Kathy did squash and I know this type of work takes hours and hours.  So, as I scratched my way through I remembered the incredibly beautiful work Kathy has done for me year after year.  She's worth the effort.

Chicken rug is done!

Wow.  This sure took awhile, didn't it!  If you remember, dear reader, I started this rug back in April when I went to my first rug camp.  I walked in the door with wool and a pattern.  I walked out with barely 2 chickens done.  Once I got home, I felt like I had to finish the fruit rug before finishing this one.  Then, life happened and I didn't have a lot of time to work on anything at all.  I finally bit the bullet and took the rug with me on vacation to Kelleys Island.  The border was so tedious.  The rug is 40+ inches by about 28 inches so there's lots and lots (and lots) of border to do.  But, after a few days at the lake, I had the border pretty much done.  That left me the final (darkest) chicken. 

I love the rug and I'm actually considering putting it on the floor (gasp!).  Most of my rugs are on walls because they are too precious to walk on.  But, I think I'm ready.  I just need to find a spot where my children never tread...

It's done!!

The fruit rug is, at last, complete.  I took it up to our lake house this weekend and got the binding sewn on.  Right now, I have the rug hanging on a dowel over our fireplace screen.  The plan is to hang it over the fireplace once our addition is complete in October.  In the meantime, I'm just enjoying looking at it.

Many lessons learned on this one. 

1. Greens can be tricky.  This rug had about 5 different types of leaves and distinguishing between them was daunting.  I'm still not 100% happy with the pineapple leaves (a little too dark) but I'm moving on.
2. Borders can be fun!  This border gave me an opportunity to use every last scrap of lots of random yellows.  I still have lots of the gold, but that's a color I use all the time.
3. Remember your color wheel!  The urn took 3 tries.  But, with all the red and yellow in the rug, blue became the obvious choice.

I'm still plugging away at the chicken rug.  One chicken to go and lots of border, unfortunately.  I've put it aside for awhile because I don't have a lot of time in the evening to work.  After baseball season is over, I'll pick it back up.  In the meantime, I need to get some knitting going!

Quick peek at my chicken rug!

Here's the beginnings of my chicken rug.  Amazingly, this is all I got done in 4 days of camp.  I'm using a #8 cut.  The chickens are not difficult, but do require some planning to get the "feathers" to look right.  My teacher was Dianne Kelly.  She had a version of the rug there and I used her hooking as a guide to draw some lines on my pattern to help me.  So far, I love it.  But, I'm going to finish my fruit rug before I work on this.

Here's "Andrea," named after my blond son Andrew.  It's his chicken.  She's the lightest in the bunch just as Andrew is the only blond in several generations of my family, except for my cousin Celia.  The photos of the actual chickens were taken last fall so their combs are not as well developed as they are now. 

I think this one is "Natalie," my youngest son's (Nate) chicken.  Natalie has a beautiful russet head and her feathers range from auburn to charcoal and back again.  I love the pattern mix on this one.  Three different wools:  two plaids and a houndstooth.  The houndstooth was a royal pain.  I could tell by the feel of the fabric that it wasn't 100% wool.  It frayed and split and was a general nightmare.  However, it was the perfect combination of shades so on I went.  Dianne recommended a wider cut so I used an 8 1/2 and that helped.  I prefer the #8 though and probably won't do much with wider cuts.  Not enough definition and detail for me.

The final chicken in the rug is going to be beautiful.  It's our darkest girl and the wools I'm using are really great.  But, I haven't even begun that one!  The border will be large triangles in blue and red.  And the eggs are being done in an exact shade matching the actual eggs.  Pale, pale sage green hand-dyed.  Beautiful.

That's your first peek -- and your last until the fruit is done!

Almost done -- Fruit rug getting ripe!

Sorry for the pun.  My rug is getting very close to completion.  I figure I worked solid almost every night for about 4 weeks trying to finish up.  I didn't get it done before Rug Camp, but I'm almost there. 

I think the tulips came out great.  The little doo-dads at the top are not terribly realistic for an actual flower, but I don't care.  They look fun and I'm leaving them.  Besides, who ever saw such a crazy color combination on a tulip in nature before!  The tulips have a combination of plaid, pumpkin, and mustard on the outer leaves and dark red and green on the center thing (stamen?).  Plaid tulips.  Now there's a hybrid I'd like.

I am going to change the center rib for the lettuce leaf just to the left of the pineapple.  The rib is too thick.  So, I'll go down to a single line of hooking and then work the right leaf to match.  That will make the 4th time I've tried something on the lettuce leaf.  Ugh.  Happily rug hooking is forgiving and is not afraid to change.  I could learn something from that, couldn't I.

Next post will be about my chicken rug that I worked on at Rug Camp.  I was dismayed at the small percentage of the rug that is done after 4 whole days of nothing but hooking, but I will perservere.  I'm going to finish the fruit first, though.

The Quilt Rugs

I love American Craft.  Folk art, tramp art, fiber art, whatever.  I think American quilts are the most amazing things.  The art quilt movement is quite strong and those quilts are truly inspiring.  But, I still prefer an old-fashioned American quilt.

My grandma learned to quilt in her 80's (she lived to 103) and she loved the fabric piecing.  I haven't tried piecing, but sewing is really not my thing.  It's a means to an end for me.  Sewing allows me to line purses and make pillows and create scarves.  Quilting is too much sewing, I think.  But I want the look of quilting.  So, back when I first started rug hooking (2005-6) I thought it would be cool to take a single quilt block pattern, blow it up, and make a rug out of it.  These four rugs are my first attempts at this.  The designs came from a wonderful book called 849 Traditional Patchwork Patterns by Susan Winter Mills.  Wow.  849 different patterns.  I think I might be making these rugs for a long, long time.

This rug was the first one I did.  The darkest color is a great plaid that came from a thrift shop skirt.  I learned quite a bit on this rug.  First, curves are hard for a beginner.  The pinwheel in the center and the corners were really difficult.  Especially since my frame at that time was a stationary frame that didn't rotate easily.  The other thing I learned was that running out of wool can actualy improve your rug.  I ran out of my initial yellow.  So, I took the closest thing I could find to finish up.  To blend the two, I pulled out single strands in the finished triangles and worked in the new yellow.  The result was more movement and more interesting color.  Lesson learned.  Now I never do an entire large area with a single, solid color.  I always blend at least two similar shades.

This rug was my second one.  Again, the inspiration wool was a plaid with mustard, red, and blue in it.  I also had this wonderful charcoal grey and the best red ever.  I think this rug is my favorite of the four that I've done.  Lots of red, touches of blue, etc.  The oatmeal wool was a batch I'd bought on Ebay.  I learned never to buy pre-cut wool unless I can see it.  The ivory was a pretty loose weave and wasn't cut on the straight of the grain with any consistency.  So, lots of fraying and splitting.  I ended up tea-staining the wool to get a little less brightness.  It worked out fine, but lots of waste.

This Tumbling Blocks quilt was the 3rd one.  Tumbling Blocks is one of my favorite quilt blocks.  I love the optical illusion.  Many years ago I attended a Kaffe Fassett knitting workshop (yes, it was fabulous!) and we spent the week working the tumbling blocks pattern in about 50 shades of tapestry wool yarn.  I felted my swatch and turned it into a pillow.  Another picture for another day.  Anyway, I love Tumbling Blocks.  I decided to have a blue/yellow theme mainly because I had lots of those colors in my stash.  You may remember my stair riser in the same colorway.  Both used the same series of wools.  This was a fun rug to work on.  I didn't plan out the whole rug ahead of time but just had set combinations of colors and then put them in appropriate places as I went along.  There were some combinations I had very limited stock so those were placed and worked first to make sure I could maximize their impact.  This was a good rug for using up small bits.  It didn't take a lot of wool to work a single little diamond.

And, here's the final one in the series to date.  I worked this rug when I had my ankle surgery.  I had all the wool cut and organized and set up next to this one chair.  I would crutch-walk over, plop myself down, and hook.  I could even work this rug with my ankle elevated on the couch!  Within a few weeks, I had this one done.  A great project to take my  mind off my confinement.  The blue in this rug is a favorite.  I'm planning to use this blue in our new addition.  The combination with the orange is terrific, I think.  And, naturally, I had a plaid that matched.

On all these rugs, I took the pattern and Kinko's blew it up for me.  They can do any size you want.  I aimed for about 17X17 square.  But, some are slightly larger or smaller.  I don't think it really matters.  Once I had the blown-up print, I would tape it to one of my windowed doors and then tape the linen over the top.  Then, it was simply a matter of tracing the lines with the Sharpie.  It's important to follow the lines of the linen so your borders are nice and straight.  But, with patience, it works out.

Rug hooking camp is next week!  I'm almost done with the fruit basket rug.  Only background and border left to go.  That rug is HEAVY!!!  My frame is protesting every time I put the rug on.  I'm amazed at how much I've accomplished in the last few weeks.

Rug Hooking with a Deadline

First, let's give credit where credit is due.  This rug is a design available on www.blacksheepwooldesigns.com .  The rug is called "Potted Pineapple with Pomegranate" and I think it is simply stunning.  The picture above is from the website and I DID NOT HOOK THAT RUG.  But, I am hooking this pattern. 

I don't really believe in buying a kit for a rug.  For one, I love choosing wool.  I love the hunt for the perfect red or variegated green or whatever.  If you've read any of my previous posts, you'll know that I love going to thrift shops and buying old wool.  I also love to play around dyeing wool, although I have about 100 years of learning to do in that department.  So, I bought the pattern on linen and am hooking it myself.

In retrospect, this may not have been the wisest choice.  You all know I am a knitter first.  Rug hooking is way down on the hobby list for me.  After Sewing, after Gardening, after Chauffeur for my boys.  Also, with a single exception, all the rugs I've made have been geometrics.  I've never done anything remotely pictorial and this rug is not only very pictorial but very large.  Over 30 inches in each dimension.  But, I could not resist the fabulous pattern so off I went.

The first change I made was in the far outside border.  I felt like the rug was very dark and wanted to brighten it up a bit.  So, my border is in shades of yellow/mustard.  My 1836 house has a lot of mustard.  Using this color ensures I can hang this rug in any room of my house and it will look great.  I also think this border picks up the pineapple colors quite nicely.  My plan is to hang this one over the fireplace in a new room we are adding on to our house THIS YEAR.  Hooray!

The second major change I made was to the urn holding up the pineapple.  The original rug had a red urn.  Red looks great in my house and certainly looks great in the original rug.  However, I have been on a quest to put more blue in my house.  The urn you see is the second version.  The first version used a much lighter blue -- almost a robin's egg blue.  And, the wedge-shaped pieces were in a bittersweet shade plus a terracotta.  The combination looked great together, but looked TERRIBLE in this rug.  This is more of a dark, colonial blue and the wedge pieces are in a fabulous orange and a tweed that combines all the shades of the rug -- red, blue, gold, green, etc.  The tweed came from a thrift shop blazer.  Anyone that recycles wool knows that getting wool from a blazer is a royal pain.  Interfacing, 5 million seams, pockets, etc.  You don't get a lot of fabric to work with and it takes a ton of time to cut the darn thing up.  Still, this tweed was so amazing and included so many of my favorite colors, I had to do it.  And, I'm glad I did.  It's perfect.

Moving on to the leaves.  There are three different sets of leaves:  the pineapple top, the lettuce leaves under the pineapple, and the grape leaves sticking out each side of the urn.  I pulled out all my greens and tried to sort them into three distinct groups for these.  I knew the pineapple needed to be dark because pineapple leaves are dark.  So, I picked those greens first.  The lettuce leaves ended up being the middle tones.  I'm not 100% happy with the lettuce and may need to pull out and change the center rib.  It is two different wools, but the shades are so similar that the vein disappears into the rest of the leaf.

The oak leaf is by far my favorite of the three but it was no picnic getting there.  The first edge tone was very bright and too clear a tone for this rug.  I tend toward the muddy tones and anything too pure looks wrong.  So, I dug back in my bags of wool strips and found a whole bag of mixed greens.  In there was a variegated green that went from chartreuse to sage to loden.  Perfect.  I had to change the vein color too.  But, I had a loden that exactly matched the loden in the edge color.  This is why we have so much wool.  You never know when you're going to need that exact shade!  The field color of the grape leaf is the only one that worked with my original choice.  I think the leaf looks great.

Late afternoon every day I make sure I have something to work on while I sit with my family in the evening.  Tonight it's the other oak leaf.  Plus some of the background.  This rug has a lot of background.  I'm using a black tweed, an impossibly dark green, and solid black all mixed together.  There's so very much of the background that I try to do a few square inches every night so I see some progress.  I would hate to finish all the fun stuff -- the motifs and the detail -- and then be faced with weeks of nothing but black.  Ugh.

As for the title of this post:  Rug Hooking with a Deadline -- that refers to the fact that I'm attending my very first rug hooking camp in about a month.  I'm taking a class with Dianne Kelly, a well-known rug hooker from right here in Northeast Ohio.  She's amazing and I'll be knitting one of her patterns.  It's another pictorial and it has chickens!!  Three chickens that I'll model after three of my own girls in the backyard.  So, I'm trying to finish this rug before the camp.  I'm not sure I'll make it, but I'm making some real progress and hope to have it down to just background and finishing at the very least.  I'll post more pictures as I go.  My next thing to tackle is the large tulips at the top of the arrangement.  I'm thinking more orange...

Life in an old house

I haven't talked much about my house.  It's old.  Built in 1836.  When I think about that, I'm in awe.  The Declaration of Independence was 60 years old.  Ink barely dry.  The Civil War hadn't happened.  Andrew Jackson was President.  My home state of Ohio had only been in the Union for 33 years.  Crazy.

There are many, many charming things about living in an old house.  I love the woodwork.  I love the beams in my basement that are basically logs with the bark partially removed.  I love the solidity.

I have found that textiles look great on the walls of an old house.  And, because I'm the Wool Girl, I have created many of the pieces that hang in my house.  I took up rug hooking a few years ago and particularly like the way rugs look.  I've created a series of square rugs where the pattern is an old quilt block.  I take the pattern to Kinko's, blow it up to about 17-inches square, and then hook the pattern.  I'll post some photos of those another time.

Project of the Day is my stair risers.  I saw a photo in a rug hooking magazine where the artist had made a rug for every stair of the house.  When you looked at the stairs, all you saw was fabulous, fabulous color and pattern.  I was completely smitten and wanted to create a similar look in my house.  But, I'm a knitter first and rug hooker second or third or somewhere down the line.  I thought it would be great to make risers using all the different crafts and techniques that I've learned over the years.

Here's a shot of the whole stair.  I still have 3 more risers to complete but I'm waiting for inspiration.  From top to bottom, the techniques are:

Wool applique using recycled sweaters

Rug hooking

Knitting  (lace)

Rug Hooking

Wool applique, felting, and embroidery

Wool applique (penny rugs)

Proddy with rug hooking

Crochet

My favorite hooked panel is the one I drew myself.  It's my house in the fall.  I love a primitive, folk art style and drew the house in that manner.  Actually, I'm not a great artist when it comes to drawing so the primitive style is just about all I can manage!  The one below it has many styles all together and was the first one I made.  I found a great product -- wool fleece that was carded and pressed into very thin sheets.  You can cut the sheets into shapes.  So, the red rectangle is a piece of felt.  I cut the bird shapes and the flower shape and then wet felted the whole thing.  I was inspired by Frakturs.  Once the felt was done, I embroidered to define and accent the motifs.

I truly love my penny rug panel as well.  Penny rugs are great because you can combine many different textures and colors in a very small space.  Each penny is at least 3 different wools.  This panel is all blues, golds, and browns.  I used leftover wool from one of my quilt rugs.  The buttons came from a very cool blouse I had with small shell buttons sewn all around the bottom.  Naturally, I spilled something on it and had to throw it out.  But, I cut the buttons off first!

The newest panel is my sheep.  I collect sheep (being the Wool Girl and all).  I knew one of the stairs would be devoted to sheep and the long, narrow shape lends itself to a little parade.  I have three boys so the mama sheep has three lambs.  I used a different recycled sweater for each sheep.  The mama is a beautiful Talbots sweater that had wool background and then an overlay of lacy wool.  Perfect.  The lambs are a plain wool, a textured knit, and a cable knit.  The "grass" is a strip from a really great coat I got at a garage sale.  As you know, I love fringe!  The background is a hunk of wool I dyed myself.

The panel below the sheep is my own version of a Log Cabin quilt.  These type of rugs are called Hit or Miss because you use a different strip of wool for every line.  I have a big rug made like this and I love the color mix.

I need to highlight my knit panel because, after all, I'm a knitter first.  I love lace knitting.  It's intimidating at first but is no more difficult than cable patterns.  The needles are just WAY smaller.  A few years ago I bought a cone of very fine Merino wool at a mill going out of business.  I think I'll be using the wool off this cone forever.  This panel is made from that same wool.  The background wool is hand-dyed by me.  Blue looks really great in my house.

I'm not sure what I'll do for the final risers.  Something will inspire me and I'll be off and running.

The Hedgehog Cuff

You know that necessity is the mother of invention. Sometimes for me, necessity breeds creativity! One year ago I had ankle fusion surgery and was faced with 9 weeks of crutches and only having one foot. But, I had prepared. I had projects ready to go in my dining room. My sewing machine was tuned up. My scissors were sharpened. The goal was to create from what I had around. No running to the fabric store or the yarn store or the anything store! Besides, you can't run on crutches and using those horrid motorized carts in the grocery or Target was bad enough when I had no choice.

So, off I went on a journey to use things up. My husband was all for it, trust me, even though the dining room looked like some kind of alien, cashmere bomb went off.

I had an entire BIN of cashmere. I've been making the scarves (see previous post) for several years but couldn't bear to throw out even the smallest scrap of cashmere. Most pieces were long and narrow. Lots of ribbings, too.

During this process, I was learning about a rug hooking technique called "proddy." You use a special tool to draw small strips of wool through the rug backing mesh. I started to play around and came up with The Hedgehog Cuff, also known as The Potscrubber (by my husband).

Here are the steps. First I cut a piece of ribbing about 2 inches by 7 inches. Then, I take some rug hooking mesh (I use linen) and make a little strip about 1 inch by 6 inches. The mesh starts out at 2 1/2 inches by 8 inches. You want a big chunk pressed underneath so non of the mesh frays when you draw through your strips. Sew the mesh onto the ribbing, slightly stretching the ribbing as you go. Leave about 1 inch of ribbing on each end so you can put on the button part.

Then I sew on a bit of recycled wool on each end and add a small button hole on one end. Sew on a small button on the opposite end.

Now the fun begins! Take your cashmere (this bracelet used 2-3 colors of blue plus some yellows and some greens). Cut the cashmere into long strips about 1/3 inch wide. Cut those strips into small strips of about 2 1/2 inches. Exact length is not important. Variation adds to the piece, I think. Put all the strips in a bowl and mix them up so you'll be pulling a random color each time.

The one tool you need for this (besides your sewing machine), is a proddy tool. They run about $25-30 and are available through rug hooking retailers. Insert the proddy into the mesh, grab a strip with the clamp, and pull it back through. Now, do that again, moving all over the mesh, about 100 times! Make sure you insert strips as close as you can to the edge of the mesh so you cover your seam. This is a great project for evenings in front of the TV. I try to get a few bracelet bases done and then cut the cashmere and go to town while listening to the Indians game or whatever.

I have lots of these listed on my Etsy shop: http://www.ragingwool.etsy.com/ . The feel is fantastic. You just want to rub your wrist all day long.