Sauder Village, Part 2

Here is the rest of my belated photos from Rug Hooking Week at Sauder Village last month.  I wish I had pictures of all of the rugs, they were so diverse and interesting.

Since Bee Line is located in the Quad Cities, home of John Deere Corporate Headquarters, I had to get a picture of this lovely rug. I also enjoyed the description of the rug, hooked by Elizabeth Marino.

There was a definite animal presence at Sauder this year, with Eye See You, and rugs like this majestic "Jonathan the Lion", designed and hooked by April deConick:

Even though I got a terrible picture of it, this rug made me laugh.  Sadly, I didn't get the name of the designer or hooker:

This was a really interesting piece - it was a face hooked on a tree trunk.  Here is the whole piece:

And here is a close-up of the face:

Another piece that I enjoyed the accompanying card:

This was really interesting, and the photo does not do the colors justice at all.  It's another piece by April deConick, called "Palette Constellation Rug".

Here is a close-up of a few of the blocks:

 Here are two very different woman - "Geisha With Lantern", designed by Marty Noble and hooked by Betty Stanley:

And the "Victorian Girl", a freestanding piece, designed and hooked by Barbara Branch:

I'm a big fan of Marimekko fabrics and prints, which usually have large patterns in big colors, so all of these rugs appealed to me on that level - the first three are by Maddy Fraioli:

And this last one is called "Spring Has Sprung", hooked by Elizabeth Costa and designed by Bea Brock.

Last, but not least, is "Lady Liberty Takes Gold" by April deConick:

Lots of variety, lots of color, and loads of inspiration!  This is what makes Rug Hooking Week at Sauder so great!

Sauder Village Recap

I'm finally caught up with the paperwork from Sauder Village, so now it's time to post pictures of the rugs.  And Oh, were there a lot of terrific rugs!  Let's get to it!

First, let me say that the amazing Katie Lane from Townsend was unable to make it to Sauder this year, there were some family commitments she had to meet.  I missed you Katie!  Ruth, our Purchasing Manager at Bee Line, came with me instead.  Of course, she left as a hooker.  Ruth bought a kit from Tomorrow's Heirlooms and started hooking.  I warned her it would happen.

Hi Ruth!

I always love being able to meet customers at Sauder - it's great to be able to put a face with a name, and I have a LOT of names.  Shari and I talk to all kinds of people during the year, so when I meet people at the show it's usually a hug-fest.

Aww!  It's Linda Keller from Grant Street Woolworks!  One of our terrific distributors.

And then, there were rugs.  Lots and lots of rugs.

Sometimes I just love the cards with the stories behind the rug on them, like the one for this fox:

Here's another favorite, hooked by Susan Feller of Ruckman Mill Farm - another one of our distributors.

This dog. "Buddy" was hooked by Leslie Cuthbertson and designed by Jon Ciemiwicz from a picture Leslie gave him.

I loved the colors of this beautiful sampler-style piece. called "Heartland Samper".  It was designed by Cactus Needle and hooked by Susan Rand.

This whimsical fortune teller, called "Future Not in the Stars", was designed and hooked by Kathleen R. Helland-Carini.

A whole series of Hippos throughout the year, here is the information:

And of course, the amazing "Eye See You 2", The Big 'Un.  This is from the original rug designed and hooked by Judy Carter, and drawn by the amazing artist, Lenny Feenan (www.theburningartist.com), but then each square was individually hooked by different instructors to make it four times the size of the original.  Love the whole thing, from the concept to the hooking.  What an accomplishment for everyone involved!

My photo feature won't let me download any more pictures, so I'll put the rest of them up this week.

Happy Hooking!
Julie

Getting Ready for Sauder!

I was hoping to get the Iowa Postcard Rug done by Rug Hooking Week at Sauder Village, but it isn't looking good time-wise.  So much to do before the Big Week!  But what better place to be to finish a rug?  Here is the shipment of Bee Line - Townsend product going to Sauder Village:

Over 1000 pounds of wool cutting equipment and frames in these two pallets.

Pretty excited to go.  If you're going to be at Rug Hooking Week, be sure to stop by the Bee Line table, see our new 14" Orbiting Floor Frames, and grab a Tootsie Roll!

I used my new navy blue wool from Wheaten Woolens on the outline of my letters, and I love how that turned out.  The navy really pops, but it coordinates well with the blue in the sky background.

Plus, I stopped by The Woolen Needle in Williamsburg (one of our fantastic BLT distributors) and Carla helped me pick out some black for the bird wings and some darker gold for the spots on the bird.  Then I stopped in at The Rug Hooking Store to see Janice Lee.  You can maybe see some lines in the sky above the barn - once again, I underestimated how much wool I would need for the sky.  The part under the Iowa is in a pretty marbled light blue, but then I ran out.  Janice found the blue I'm using above the Iowa, and told me to pull some worms out of the lower sky and incorporate them into the upper sky, and vice versa, so they'll blend.  I'm working on that now.

Here it is with worms out....

Here it is with worms in.

I can't believe how close the two blues are, and how well they blend.  Janice was helpful in not only helping me with my sky issue, but also with my "double wool twists" on the back of the rug.  But that is a topic for another post!

Hope everyone is enjoying cooler weather and maybe some RAIN!  The crops are certainly sad around here.  Have a great week!

Gimme An "A"!

I'm getting close on finishing the A, and in what is exciting news for me, I finally got an outline color for the letters!  Yay!  No more indecision!  This means I finally have all of the wool I'm using for this rug.  Oh wait...except the bird.  Dang.

Here is the rug so far - I'm loving how it's turning out:

Just a bit more of that Gene Shepherd Roman Sun and I'm done with the letters!  There is a small shadow outside of the letters and on the inside of the O and the A.  The picture that came with the pattern from Nola Heidbreder shows a light brown or burgundy outline for the letters, but I wasn't a big fan of that color.  I thought about taking the ruby red color from the side of the barn and bringing that in, but alas - not only do I not have enough wool to do it, but as much as I love that ruby it seems like it would be a little harsh against the letters and the sky.  Someone suggested the green, but I love the trees and don't want to detract from them.  What do you do when you can't make a decision?  Make someone else do it!

There aren't many rug hookers in the Quad Cities - if there are, I have yet to meet more than four.  So imagine my delight in discovering a new studio opening in Davenport - Wheaton Woolens, by Beth Anne Smiley!

This is a picture of Beth Anne from her website, www.wheatonwoolens.com - here she is actually at The Wooley Fox, enjoying a camp.  Beth is opening her studio in this adorable 1860 stone barn on her property.  The other hooker I know in town, Julie Bohl, was at the studio as well, and she and Beth Anne took a look at my rug and made a number of suggestions as to what color would go well with the rest of the rug.  We finally settled on a beautiful navy blue - I'm hooking it in now, and it is really giving the letters the "pop" they need without overpowering the whole thing.

Beth Anne is holding rug hooking classes in her barn, so be sure to check out her website for more information.  The more the merrier!  I'm going to the Omaha area to see my mom for her birthday, and fortunately I'll be within 10 minutes of Janice Lee's shop, The Rug Hooking Store and Black Horse Antiques, so I think I'm going to finally get some "closure" on that Magdelena Eby purse I hooked last fall.

Only two weeks until Sauder!  Be sure to go to their page on Facebook, "Rug Hooking Week at Sauder Village" to stay up-to-date on what's going on!

The Trouble With W

I've been working on my Iowa Postcard rug in hopes that I can get most of it done by Sauder Village, but let me tell you, hooking these letters has been a challenge.  Here is the rug so far:

So maybe....MAYBE...I'm getting toward being 50% done, but these letters?  They just might kill me.  Things that I can hook in a swirl, or a line, or an outline - no problem.  But hooking in a diagonal line on a somewhat horizontal stripe???  Yikes.

It may not look SO bad from this picture.  In pictures of my face from a distance you can't see the wrinkles either! :)  So let's zoom in a bit:

Here is the W a little bit closer.  NOW you can start to see the caddywhompus rows and loops.  I notice the right side looks a little better than the left side.  I think that's because on the right side, I hooked in straight rows, and then filled in later.  On the left side, I just tried to hook row next to row, moving loops over as needed to fill the space.  Overall, I like the look of the right side better, and may end up unhooking some of the left side of the W.  I'll need to get away from the letters for a bit and then re-visit it.  Now for the REALLY honest picture:

Oy.  Here is that left side of the W, warts and moles and all.  I'm using Gene Shepherd's Roman Sun wool, so there are four different shades of this lovely yellow-orange color. 

I'm hooking them in stripes on the letters.  The color is fantastic, but my rows can certainly use some help.

If anyone has any great tips or methods for hooking on a diagonal, I'd love to hear about it!  In the interim, the next section is waiting to be hooked on my Bee Line 14" Orbiting Frame (which I love, and will have at Sauder Village).  I hope I get an "A" on it!

In The Clouds

June is flying by here at Bee Line - Townsend!  We finished our 14" Orbiting Floor Frame, now available on our website at http://www.beeline-townsend.com/, or from one of our fantastic distributors.  I've been so busy getting that on the market that I haven't had time to actually hook on it lately!  My poor Iowa rug has been sitting in my cubicle, lonely, waiting for me to pick up my hook.  This week, that all changed.

I finally got some hooking done!  I wanted to finish the letters first, but in yet another rookie error, I let my worms get mixed up.  You can see on the right side of the "O", the wool looks a little lighter.  I think I accidentally hooked the lighter wool for the bottom in that layer, so I'll probably need to pull it out.  I got frustrated about it, so I thought I would hook a nice, calming cloud before I moved on.

I used Nola Heidbreder's "Snow" wool for the cloud, and I like the bits of blue/gray in it that brings just a tiny bit of dimension into the cloud.  I was trying to hook in a way that brought a little bit of "cloud-like motion" into it, not sure about my level of success on that front! 

Once again, I'm going to rely on steaming to save the day!

Now that my head is out of the clouds, I'm going to go reverse hook that poor "O".  I'd like to have this rug done by Sauder Village, because then?  I can buy new stuff!  Yay!

Next Project: Vintage Iowa Postcard

Waaaay back in August, I had the opportunity to take my show on the road to Sauder Village Rug Hooking Week.  I was lucky enough to meet Nola Heidbreder, who became one of our Bee Line-Townsend distributors after Sauder Village.  I saw Nola for the first time at Marilyn Schmidt's Hook-In in Lenexa, Kansas last February, but she was pretty busy the whole time so I didn't get to officially meet her, but I fell in love with the Vintage State Postcard  patterns she was selling.  At Sauder, I couldn't resist any longer, and I bought one.

Here is the pattern, available on Nola's website, http://www.nolahooks.com/:

It's 17x30 - isn't it cute?  I happened to have some wool that will work well in this piece, so I got started.  I should mention that I have no patience whatsoever, so I probably dove in before I should.  Patience really IS a virtue, I shall probably pay for my haste later (see "Ran out of background wool" on last post!)

Now that I've started the tree line, I'm completely geeking out because the wool I have is absolutely PERFECT for the trees.  I'm finding it's so much fun to find the perfect piece of wool for a project.

Here's the green wool, freshly cut on my Bee Line - Townsend cutter (shameless plug, I know!) This wool has a few different hues of green in it, an then just a touch of brown.  Perfect for trees!

Here is what it looks like hooked into the pattern:

I'm trying to do round shapes in the tree line - I do try to pay attention to some of the fantastic rugs I see at shows!  The bit below is supposed to look a little like farmland - the green is pattern-free, with a little variation in the greens.  Someone did a lovely job dyeing this, I wish I could remember where I bought it to attribute it!

Here's a different shot of the project in its early stages:

 I know Laurie Simpson is teaching a class at Sauder Village 2012 on Vintage Postcard Pillows, and I would so love to take it, but I think I will need to be at my booth since BLT is vending at the event.  *le sigh*  Although who knows?  I may still be working on this rug in August! 

Sauder Pictures, Part 2

Yesterday I posted a bunch of pictures from Sauder Village Rug Hooking Week, but I didn't want to do too many for fear they wouldn't load on the site, so in the words of Walter Cronkite, here is The Rest of The Story:

I am a HUGE fan of dogs, and I plan to someday hook my Standard Poodle, George.  Whenever I see hooked dogs, I always stop and take note. 

This Bassett Hound was so full of joy!  The photo doesn't even come close to capturing the essence of this great dog.  The subtle variations in the sky in the background were terrific.

Right below the Bassett was this spunky Airdale.  The colors in this rug were amazingly vibrant, and I love how the red background was hooked.

Right around the corner was this fun pup, I'm assuming a Maltese maybe?  This one attracted me because my George is an apricot poodle, so he is very creamy, and I'm a fan of the Warhol prints with the great color silkscreen.  This rug captures what I picture doing with George.

"What cute dog is going to be a rug someday?  Huh?  Is it you George? Yes it is!"

This rug is really big - I can't even get my head around how much work goes into these pieces!  I'm still learning the rudimentary steps in rug hooking, but I told my husband it's like 3D chess - you make one move and it affects things on three other layers.  Your color choice, your cut choice, your loop height, your hooking direction...it seems to be equally freeing and restricting to think about all of these choices!

These rugs were hooked by Patty Yoder, and they are all very large rugs.  Again, the time and effort into these beautiful pieces is staggering.  The sheep in the middle is another inspiration for my George rug, because he rather looks like a sheep.  I love the guy standing next to the cow in the barn.

The center part of the exhibit was a large collection of rugs hooked by Magdalena Briner Eby, and the interpretation rugs designed and hooked by the talented Evelyn Lawrence.  There were books for sale about this collection, written by Evelyn Lawrence and Kathy Wright, which I purchased.  It's a fascinating history lesson on the time and on a rug hooking pioneer.  You can get a copy by contacting Kathy Wright at Traditions by Wright & Co, at 859-745-5740.  It's worth every penny.

My favorite part of the show?  When Samuel Dorr, son of Terry, with Dorr Mill Store, took the microphone to sing the closing song he wrote, "Somewhere Over the Selvage", to the tune of "Over the Rainbow".  It was a real show-stopper, literally.  He ended to a standing ovation.  What a fun week.  We are just a temporary booth at Sauder Village Rug Hooking Week, so we haven't been invited yet to next year's show, but I will be there either way.  It is a show that is not to be missed.