Getting Ready for Green Cat and Progress on other rugs

It took a couple of days to get the new Green Cat design worked out for the linen I'm going to use. Once I got one side of the design worked out the rest of it clicked into place. This is not asymmetrical design where everything is identical on both sides but reversed. It has similar elements on both sides, but slightly different. It's a tad more complicated design wise than my original and may not work for wide cuts after all. This will make a great rug for a kid's room now. It's got a very happy feeling to it. I think. While I was working on this I was think about other variations on the 'green' theme a green dog, a green wolf, and maybe a monkey. I have a stag/deer already done as a sketch and needlepoint canvas some years back I may use too as a hook design. I wish I could draw as fast as my mind comes up with ideas. Still have to draw it out on interfacing then transfer to the linen. I though I'd see how the interfacing tracing worked as I haven't tried it before, I usually just stick the drawing underneath the backing fabric and draw over.






I got some fabrics dyed for the GC yesterday. For the most part they came out pretty much like I wanted them too. I'm still working out the colors I'm going to use and have to figure out what I'm going to do with the cat flowers in the sketch. I just sketched out generic fantasy flowers sort of daisies and straw flowers. I'll have to look at some flower books and hope I can find some decent color references. Flowers and shrubbery are not my strong suit.




In the evenings I've been catching up on my older in progress rugs the Greenman and the Family rug. I've about got the bottom 1/4 of the family rug filled in so I can move my fabric to reposition it to hook Bill the metal Rabbit and work on Nicholas the fire pig, my mom the earth snake, myself-- the metal tiger, my dad the fire rabbit. Most of these are in the center.


Going from clockwise Bekka fire dragon, Mark-teal water horse, Michelle-fire sheep, Heather-wood rabbit, Chloe-water sheep, and Cecil center- metal dog. Not hooked yet--Nicholas-fire pig and Bill--metal rabbit.


The original rug layout. I've been making more changes as I go along.


Mom and Dad


I am using a large stretcher strip frame that 30 x 32 as I gave up on the oval quilt frame when I couldn't get the finished hooking parts in it without crushing them to reposition. I'd kill for either a wide rug frame or something with the gripper strips. Though my compliant with most of them is the limited area you have to work in. I like seeing the surrounding area of what I am working on to get the colors to blend in--just like when I was painting. I still might break down and make myself a large rug frame but then there's where to put it and work on it given my space limitations and liking to have my rugs portable so I can work on Bill's desk at night, at my desk, or take it over to my daughters to work on.




Greenman is about ready to be repositioned too and I'm going to finish the top part before the bottom. This will end up as a wall hanging. Since I am hooking with just unspun dyed fleece I think I'm going to have to needlefelt the back to sequre everything and neaten it up. This does not make for a neat back just using the fleece, but it does give a thin layer of padding tot he back. Working with this I am seeing ways to do my combination felted and hooked pieces I have in my head. I'm making myself not jump projects and to try and finish these things I have started before jumping into new ones. I have so many ideas in my head that I want to and never enough time--grrr.

On the pictures, they are taken with 2 different angles and lighting. One shows up the textures really well and the other is closer to the real colors in them.

New Blog

I'll get the hang of this blog yet. I'm currently into rug hooking and got started when friends in both Wales and in Iowa encouraged me to design some rug hooking canvases for them. I started my first rug in Nov '06 for my grandson that was born February 28, 2007.



I didn't get back into hooking until this fall when my friend in Iowa had me do some more canvases and I started doing 2 rugs I had started in '07, a cat rug and my Greenman rug. The cat got finished by the end of October and I'm still working on the Greenman. He's being done in dyed fleece with a fine hook on Heatherfield cross stitch fabric.





At the end of November I designed and started a new rug for my family based on everyone's Chinese horoscope characters for their year. I designed 28 different characters and arranged them primitive barnyard style on a piece of 44 x 72 burlap. The figures are being hooked in dyed fleece while the background is in dyed recycled wool fabric strips hand cut because I don't have a cutter yet.



I'm also working on a set of 8" dancing stars, tribal sun and moon squares that I will figure out what they're going to be when I get done. I just finished an international trivet swap on Rughookers Yahoo Group and sent my swap mate Elise in the Netherlands a dragon trivet. It was done in my handspun yarns on Aida cloth.



I'm going to be in on Gene Shepherd's hook-in on his blog. Wednesday he showed off all three of the design alternatives I sent him. I was not wild about the original design and had to come up with designs I would hook. http://geneshepherd.com/blog1/?p=1531

Today I'm going through fabrics to use. I think I'll be doing the dragon in a basket first. Yesterday I went to the thrift stores and got about 15 jackets, and skirts to dissemble. Found three great brown plaids for basket--it's hopefully going to look like a pine needle basket, 3 solid creams, 2 light cream plaids, 2 very cheerful red plaids, a solid red, a green wool sweater and black watch plaid. The creams I think are going in the main inner background, while I am still debating on what the outer background is going to be. The greens I got yesterday may or may not go in this piece as I have a bunch of really good dragon greens and leaf colors all ready to go. I think my flowers are either daisies or Sunflowers. Yellows I already have. But kind of low on pinks, purples or blues as they are being held out for other projects.