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...