There’s plenty on the frame today. And on the dining room table too! Am up to my eyeballs in work: 1) finishing a bedsheet rug and 2) going through inventory and re-tagging in order to get ready for Albuquerque’s Rail Yards Market starting (for me) June 5. Then there are the two or three small mats that I have to finish off. If you have a couple of hours and feel like sewing some, give a yell!
Wha’s on your frame today?
Hard to believe, but it’s a full week later and the open workshop with Cheryl Bollenbach has come and gone.
Fortunately, the lessons learned and the camaraderie enjoyed go on. Case in point: many of us from the Adobe Wool Arts guild are gathering Friday for another round of dyeing. Okay, personally, I’m not doing any dyeing; I don’t even have any wool to dye. I’m just going to hang out and provide the comedy.
I’ve included a bunch of pics I took last week. Some are of rugs, some are of rugs and their people, and some are just of folks concentrating on their hooking or having fun.
Cheryl helped each of us develop some new skills, learn a few tricks, and look further into what it is we’re aiming to get out of this art/craft of rug hooking. She did some “long and lovely” dying in the Fry Daddy.
Friday, Cheryl finally put the “fire” into her presentation as she’d been promising: she demonstrated how we might enjoy aiming a heat gun onto decorated Tyvek to shrivel it. “Cut it into strips and you can really hook this up,” she told us. For those not familiar with Albuquerque springs, they tend to be rather windy. Indeed, Friday, Mother Nature let it gust. The doors of our police substation venue were desperate to open and close on their own; Linda was almost blown down as she stepped outside. Maybe fire wasn’t the best idea for the day especially given our EMS facility. Nonetheless, Cheryl was up for it. Alas, the heat gun on hand wasn’t. Too hot, it blew holes into the Tyvek. They were, we noted, quite interesting-looking holes. (Sorry, the wind precluded photos being taken.) Yet I’m sure something could’ve been done with that Tyvek and some wool and a little imagination. And even the foot-long, blue twist tie Cheryl deposited on my table Wednesday afternoon. That’s how she made us feel about hooking. Anything is possible.
Thank you, Cheryl Bollenbach, for an an informative and plain old fun three days. Kudos to Catherine Kelly for all your organizational work and to all the other members of the Adobe Wool Arts guild for the hospitality and friendship you’ve shown me these last several months since I moved to town.
Now I remember why I stopped whipstitching and went back to finishing rugs with binding tape. And why so many asked about my method of sewing the tape to the edge of the rug before I pull a single loop. ‘Cause whipstitching is a BIG pain in the heiny!
I can say that because I’ve spent part of the past couple of says whipstitching two small rugs. In order to save some of my dwindling supply of monk’s cloth (my old supplier closed over a year ago, and I bought a LOT then), I drew the two mats pretty close together and didn’t bother to sew the twill tape on. I’ll finish them differently, I told myself. Idiot.
The reality is that I find sewing on binding tape BY HAND ALWAYS pretty “zenning.” I listen to music or Prairie Home Companion while I do it. Not so much whipstitching. But it had to be done. And so it was.
In other news, last Thursday evening, Tom and I headed down to the University of New Mexico – Valencia’s Fine Arts Gallery in Los Lunas to hear Adobe Wool Arts guildmate Mary Schnitzler lecture on rug hooking in general and Grenfell mats in particular. Great job, Mary! Then a group of us walked over to the artists’ reception to look at all the mats that are hanging for the month-long show. If you’re in the area, stop by. In the meantime, enjoy a few photos.
The Colors of the Southwest show put on by the Albuquerque Fiber Arts Council is history. It opened Friday morning; there was a “meet the artists” reception that evening. Saturday it ran all day. I was there Friday evening to view and schmooze and Saturday afternoon to demonstrate rug hooking. Took a LOT of pics as there were many, many talented artists represented. Enjoy!
Congratulations to the Albuquerque Fiber Arts Council and member guilds on a show well done!
Experimenting. I’ve got plenty to do this week, still I find myself trying something new. Last
Thursday, I started a new rug. One on latch hook backing. Made out of old sheets. This re-cycling – or the more virtuous sounding “up-cycling” – thing has really grabbed me. I’m hoping it’ll grab buyers too when I start selling at the Rail Yard Market in June. Rag rugs are in vogue these days, you know.
I’ve included a couple of pics to show how it’s going. The design is simple, paisley-like, as I needed to see how the sheets would hook up before I went crazy. The strips are about a half-inch wide. No need for real precision here. Savers (a used goods store that I frequent) provided the sheets. I’m hoping to find brighter colors next time, though these are fairly desert-esque. That’s fitting for here in Albuquerque.
I’ve sleeved and handed over “Ribbons Over Albuquerque” to the “Colors of the Southwest” fiber arts exhibit. It runs this weekend at the Garden Center (in itself a very cool place to visit) here in town. I’m looking forward to the show’s opening Friday evening along with the artists’ reception. Saturday, I’ve been tasked with demonstrating. That means that I need to get on the stick and finish prepping my next piece. (I figured I’d show them rug hooking in its more traditional form, so I’m leaving the sheets at home. And using t-shirts. 😉 ) Because I sew my binding on before I hook, there’s a needle and some thread in my immediate future.
Before I head back to that mat, though, I need a favor. Yesterday I created a Facebook page for my Adobe Wool Arts guild here in Albuquerque. It’ll let us share what’s going on in the guild as well as communicate with all the hookers out there in cyberspace. If you’d be so kind as to give us a looksie at https://www.facebook.com/AdobeWoolArts/, we’d be ever so grateful. Feel free to comment, share, educate, whatever. And then LIKE us. We love meeting new friends.
How much experimenting do you do when you hook?
