Gearing Up for Our First URFG Retreat

We had our Prep Day last Saturday, where everyone primed their stools for the retreat.  It was fun to see the choices; everyone had a different type of stool, all the way from a bench to a high chair.  Londi is leading us step by step through the painting process, then we will all hook a top for our stools at the retreat.  The goal is for everyone to go home with a finished product by retreat's end, no UFOs here!

We have 21 people registered for the retreat at Daniel's Summit.  The board is planning so many fun things, we can't wait!

Karen Kahle

At our meeting on Saturday, Londi mentioned Karen Kahle several times in her class on color theory. She shared a couple photos that she had taken of Karen's rugs when she attended a class she took from her a few years ago. Here is a link to an online photo album showing close-ups of her work so you can see details and study her techniques for using color in her rugs. And you can see more pictures of Karen & what she makes here. Karen is one of the national teachers that we'd like to bring to Utah for a workshop!

Our Meeting

Our Guild had a meeting on Saturday and we had a really good turnout of 20 people, and that included two brand new members who joined while they were there - Yay! By all accounts the meeting was a rousing success.

We are so lucky to have Londi in our group - she  continued teaching her color theory class that was started at our last meeting - and educated us more concerning color distribution, color ratio, color saturation, and color weaving. Hopefully we can make our rugs more pleasing to the eye by using the techniques she taught us. Londi has taught this class all over the world to people who paid a lot of money to take it, and now we get to learn for free just by being members of the Guild. 

After that class, Londi explained a project that we will be working on at our Retreat in April. It was suggested that everyone purchase a stool of some sort - then we can hook a cover for it. Londi will help us paint the wood part of the footstool so that the two parts will coordinate beautifully. Since painting is her specialty she will be able to show us different techniques such as dry brushing & crackling. Shown below are some examples she brought with her so we could get ideas for what we want to do.

Then the meeting moved on to the part where we were able to learn different rug hooking techniques. These included how to hide ends, how to do random hooking, how to hook a sharp crisp point, hot to hook hit & miss, how to decide which technique to use, how to make a plaid sampler, how to do beading and coiling. Here are a couple pictures of the work some of the attendees did.

As a supplement to that, you should check out these photos. Cathy is a rug hooker and writes the blog Orange Sink. She has posted several great pictures of a rugs she made using the coiled wool techniques in a Flikr album. Looking at these will give you more ideas on how to use this technique in your own projects.

Ali Strebel authors a blog also, and calls these coils 'standing wool circles'. You can see what she does with them on this post.

Here is a YouTube video that will give you more instruction on random hooking - or pixelating as this teacher calls it.

We're excited about our upcoming retreat and hope the members of the Guild will support our efforts to organize event this by planning to attend. More information will be posted about this at a later date.

Magazines

Magazines can be a great source of information for us in our rug hooking endeavors. They can provide patterns, dye recipes, techniques and and other important and helpful bits. Some can be found on the magazine racks at your local store. Some are available only by subscription. Here are three that are recommended:

Rug Hooking Magazine has been around the longest and is probably the most well known of them all.  They have articles about traditional and primitive hooking, and lots of nationally known rug hookers have written for them.

The Wool Street Journal is a relative newcomer to the arena and they cater exclusively to the primitive hooker. They do stories about rug hooking groups around the country, and inclulde lists of vendors where rug hooking supplies are available for purchase.

Create & Decorate almost always has a free rug hooking pattern in each issue, as well as punch needle designs that can be enlarged for hooking. They have patterns for other primitive crafts that are fun to make as well. 

If you've never tried these magazines before, pick up a copy (or send away for one) and give it a try - it might just contain the inspiration you need for your next project! You might even drop hints to your family about receiving a subscription for a birthday gift or some other occasion  - wouldn't that be great?

Free Patterns

It might be fun to hook up one of these free snowman patterns now that the weather has gotten colder and winter is on the way!

Here is one available from Blue Ribbon Rugs.

And another one from Badbirds.

Guild Meeting

We had our Guild Meeting on Saturday at the Pioneer Craft House in Salt Lake City. Londi gave us all a lot of food for thought with her hands-on color theory class - I think we all learned a lot about primary, secondary, and tertiary colors and how the color wheel works. Of course, this information is helpful for us when it comes to dyeing the wool we want for our hooked rugs, and how to choose colors that will be harmonious together. Here are some pictures of the process:

After the color class, we pulled out the supplies needed for making covered button bracelets using wool fabrics. The gals had a lot of fun with this project and the variety of colors and fabrics used made each person's version completely original. Very fun! It will be fun to see these being worn by their makers at future meetings.

Jan's buttons:

Miriam's buttons:

Pat's buttons:

Londi's Musings

(1)  Here's a link to Karen Kahle's Flickr account - it's fun to look at her many fiber art skills -- eye candy for any fiber artist!  Check out her crochet  edge  tutorial on this site!  The crochet edge is my favorite because it is so homey, vintage and soooo unusual - makes a rug stand out from the crowd!   She is one of the teachers the Guild is looking at possibly having for a seminar in 2012: 
http://www.flickr.com/photos/primitivespirit/

(2)  Some of my favorite Hook-In memories:  
       - Angela Anderson did a great demonstration of her dying techniques (KISS is her mantra!).  She has 5 small children and keeps 4 dye kettles going at the same time on her dye days...not a wasted minute!  Angela has a new dye book (and matching swatches), plus she also dyes the swatches for Nancy Raybould's wonderful dye book.  I'm a slow learner......so a light bulb finally went on when I saw how Angela has glued her dye swatches in the books, next to the recipe (I had 400 swatches in  big ziplock bags).  I was so inspired, I spent 3 days gluing all my swatches into their respective dye books!  Never want to see another glue stick - but hey,  it's so much easier to see what I have now!
     -  Martha Stewart move over!  You've got serious competition!  Marianne Michaels has hooked the most incredible ROOM SIZE rug!  It is not only the biggest hooked rug anyone had ever seen, it is also beautiful. What's even more incredible is she made this rug in only about 4 month!!  I know Martha only sleeps 4-5 hour a night...Marianne, you make Martha look like a slacker!  The rug took top honors at the hook-in.  I hope we'll have a picture of it on the blog in the near future, but you really had to be there to take in the magnitude of this rug.  Congratualtions Marianne!
   
     -  I loved chatting with kindred spirit - Tonia McKibben.  She and I share a love of antiques - especially antique childrens toys and furniture and New England antique furniture.  She is extemely knowledgeable about these subjects, and ran an antiques business prior to moving to Utah.  She brought the most wonderful antique childs bench (it has a matching chair at her home).  She restored this little bench and hooked a darling sailboat bench seat for it.  Everyone loved it.  I hope we'll have pictures of this on the blog in the future too.     
  
(3)  Color lesson - November Guild Meeting:
      We will take the mystery out of the color wheel by painting one.  Everyone will mix paint colors and make a personal color wheel.
      We will mix all 12 colors of the color wheel and learn a VERY simple language of only SIX WORDS which will describe any color in the world. 
      We will also mix all the earth colors (aka tertiary colors) used for toners - (sometimes called Mother colors). 
       And finally, we'll take this "paint" knowledge and covert it to dye knowledge /Cushings dyes and where they fall on the color wheel.