Felted Dryer Balls

Here’s a great way to use up all of those snippets you cut off when making your rugs…..put them into felted dryer balls!

Our Laurie McRae takes a large handful of snippets and wraps them with roving. 

That ball is then wrapped with roving style yarn.  The ends of that yarn are lightly felted into the ball to hold it all in place.

That yarn wrapped ball is then covered with floofed up roving - thin wispy bits are best.  It’s then felted into a ball.

Next up, it’s placed into a discarded stocking and it’s knotted to hold it in place.  Usually you put several balls together into one stocking, with knots in between them.  The whole shebang is then put into the washing machine on the highest heat  setting with the greatest agitation.  Following that is a run in the dryer on high heat.

The stocking is removed et voilà….you have a dryer ball!

Thank you to Laurie and Carrie for their help in putting this post together!

TIGHR Report!

The Photo Booth was enjoyed by many of the attendees!

The fall is always a busy season in rug-hooking land, and this year was extra special, as there was a TIGHR (The International Guild of HandHooking RugMakers) gathering.  This is a group dedicated to rug hooking all over the world, and they get together every 3 years.

Our Susan Hartwell is a member and she made the trek to Niagara and provided us with this report:

The International Guild of Handhooking Rugmakers (TIGHR) held its triennial conference from September 29 to Oct 2 in Niagara Falls.  This was my first TIGHR conference and it was outstanding!

From the welcome reception to the end of classes on Wednesday, the entire conference had so many highlights. I wished I could be in two places at once on many occasions. There were several speakers, panel discussions, workshops, and excursions. The delegates were from Australia, Bermuda, Canada (10 provinces), England, Ireland, Japan, Norway, and 25 states of the United States.

This is a collection of Sue Waddington’s rug hooking that was in the rug display.  Sue and her husband, Jim, were guest speakers after lunch on Monday.

These lovely quillie pendants were made during a workshop.

The theme for the Friendship Mat Exchange was “A Place to Grow”.  There were well over 100 people who participated in the exchange.  It was fun to see the many interpretations of the theme.

A highlight of the conference were the hundreds of people who participated in the Parade of Wearable Art.  Jean Jackets with rug hooked backs were very popular.  the designs were brilliant and very inspiring!

The next TIGHR conference will be October 2027 in Newport, Rhode Island,, US.  Looking forward to more fun!

 

Sue Hartwell

* Hint Hint….if you, too, have something to report to our group (maybe a trip to something textile-y or a museum??)….why not provide us with a quick report and/or a few photos….and we will take care of posting it to the blog to be shared with all of our members and followers??  No techie skills are required!  (A big thank you to Susan!)

Portrait-topia

 

Eleven of us (plus Wendie) just spent the past 2.5 days immersed in a portrait class with Wendie Scott Davis.  We are exhaustipated, but exhilarated!  This was a difficult class, for even the simplest of portraits, and some of our number chose real whoppers to work on!

We learned more about value and flesh tones than we would have thought possible.  We also learned about techno bits to make some of the work a titch easier….and Wendie has supplied us with tons of notes and tutorials.  We even had a wee bit of fun…..

We started out with transferring our patterns using sublimation markers - a fabulous process - very easy to do if you have the right markers (we used ready-made ones from amazon or Michael’s).  Here’s a link to the Ottawa Old Forge Rug Hookers instructions on the transfer, using a refillable marker. (btw, their instructions for beginners page contains a whack of great info!)

And then we started in on the hooking part…..

After the first half day we were a tad overwhelmed and wondering what the heck we had gotten into….but we arrived the next day ready to jump in.

You start with the eyes….and this is where all of our portraits looked like zombies for a few hours.

Eventually we moved on to mouths, and teeth for some….now we had folks with chiclets for teeth….

After the 2nd day, we left feeling exhausted and drained - those portraits are hard work!

We were ready to get going by the 3rd day.  Everyone worked at their own pace - and some had almost completed portraits at the end, others have a tad more work to do….but by the end of it all, i think we were on a bit of high - we accomplished a LOT and have some really fantastic portraits underway.  Here are just a few examples.

A huge thank you goes to Wendie for guiding us along this journey - she pushed and cajoled and kept us entertained.  Her creativity is off the scale!  Her hard work allowed us to produce some amazing works.

For those interested in some true eye candy (and for the students who want to study how she did some of these things), here are photos of the works she brought along to inspire us. (For scale - many of these are 8x8-ish!)

Another weekend of winners!

Yes, indeed…..our group stepped up and there were many rug hooking entries at this weekend’s Port Hope Fair.  There were lots of (modest) prizes to be won - and everyone who entered, it seems, got a prize.

We won’t show photos here, as these folks may wish to enter these items at next year’s OHCG Annual in Cobourg…..but we will let you know that Best in Show was won by Carol Rolph!  Congrats!

We’ve also got a “booth” at the Fair where we showcase our member’s works.  There have been lots of folks checking out rug hooking and our group!  We’re there again today, so c’mon by!

99 Years Young!

Our own Joyce Jones recently celebrated a milestone birthday:  she is now 99 years old!  We feted her at our regular Thursday gathering, with cake and ice cream!

Joyce has been rug hooking since 1972, and has amassed some amazing rugs!  She regularly hosts our group at her stone farmhouse, and shares her knowledge and skills readily with us.  Still going strong, her current project is a William Morris Redcar pattern.

Looks like a good time was had by all!

Corn Roast at Lang

This past Sunday was Lang Pioneer Village’s Corn Roast, and the Northumberland Rug Hookers were there to demonstrate rug hooking:  Dianne, Judy and Audrey attended, and wore 19th century costumes, to boot!  There was a bit of rain in the morning, but as the weather cleared up more folks came along.

Here are some photos supplied by the Stitchery Guild (also there demonstrating).