Nancy's Project

At our recent rug hooking retreat, people were working on a fun project - they were supposed to bring a small footstool and learn different painting techniques for the wood. Then they were supposed to hook a little mat for the surface.

Nancy recently finished her project and the pictures are below. If you attended and have finished your project too, please email pictures of it to either Angela at angelach@burgoyne.com or Gayle at dyeing2hook@msn.com - we'd love to post them here on the blog for everyone to enjoy seeing!

Grand Prize Winner

Jennifer was our grand prize people's choice winner at our rug show at the retreat--she entered her cat rug at the 11th hour, just when she finished binding it!  It's a good thing, since everyone loved it. :)  She made it at the request of her mother in law, who has Alzheimer's, and since time was an issue, she completed it in less than 2 months--from design to whipping!  Congratulations!

URFG Spring Retreat

Our first official guild retreat was held this past weekend at Daniel's Summit Lodge.  Everyone had a wonderful time, and even the Easter Bunny came!  The stools looked beautiful when they were finished being painted, so beautiful in fact, some opted not to cover the tops with a hooked mat as planned. (And I agreed!)

When all was said and done, we had 18 attendees (including 4 mother/daughter pairs!), with 3 vendors of wonderful wool:  Pioneer Primitives, Wooly 4 Ewe, and Nancy's wool.  I hope we can double our attendance for next year--everyone is welcome--the cost was only $30 for guild members, plus room and food. Quite a deal, if you ask me!

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?