Happy Weekend and an Update on my Wool Quilt Project & a Rust Dye Video

   Hi everyone, we have lots of noisy thunder and lighting going on but no rain as of yet-sometimes it will just go around us.

   I will be busy this weekend getting ready for Larry's sister and family's visit from Chicago. She wants to see our new lake house and go fishing and enjoy the lake. She will be in late Sunday but she has rented a condo for her family. I kinda suggested this do to the covid and they are very active people. Her husband owns and all animal and bird clinic and is a vet and surgeon, and her and her daughter are always off doing things.  So this weekend I will be cleaning house and grocery shopping.  Should be a fun week.

   I wanted to update my last post for my wool quilt project. 

      When I had moved to the lake house I didn't realize all the felted down wool I had. I was buying 100% wool clothing from the resale shops felting it down with very hot water in the wash and took it all apart from the seams. I had plans to use it for rug hooking, mixed media projects, and wool applique. I still would like to  make the primitive wool applique quilt from a very old quilt pattern by Barbara Brackman. I also had an idea in mind to make a wool quilt. They are really pretty when sewn together with crochet-and nice and warm and cozy too.

   I don't know how to crochet-I could learn, but there is allot of handwork involved and I am already working on small hexagon quilt which is all sewn by hand so I don't need another one of those especially at my age with so many more things I want to make.

  Searching the internet I found the perfect method from this old blog post  She made a hexagon quilt but I cut up blocks and rectangles. You zig zag over the two edges with them butted up together. I thought this sounded perfect.

   I ended up getting so engrossed in planning out the layout and size and then cutting up almost 200 pieces. I cut from about 4 pm to midnight-no wonder my back and hands were hurting lol  I haven't been this engrossed in a project since before covid.  Its all on hold now til I catch up on the things this weekend for our guests.

    I greatly reduced my wool collection-eliminated three large stuffed pillow case "bags" cut up all the sweaters I had felted down, and didn't save the scraps so tossed a huge kitchen garbage size bag. 

I still have this large bottom drawer of a trunk filled (that is dried tansy to keep away the  moths)

This trunk is filled to the top, the cool doll was made by Barbara-I love her and she needs a name-any suggestions??

    In the closet I also have two small tubs filled with mostly wool yardage

This is hooked rug project-my first one and would like to finish this up. I ended up making the rug a little too tight with the loops so will need to get steamed down-was hoping for a bench cushion

These are the wool strips I cut-I still have my Mom's rug wool cutter she did allot of amazing hooked rugs with her hand dyed wools and her strips were very narrow like they used to make these. This new larger size is the folk style

In the old days they used burlap now they mostly use linen, my Mom always used burlap. One holds the strips under the rug and uses the hook on top to bring it to the top.

  searching around online about wool I found an amazing textile  wool artist  and I wanted to share this rust dye video with you-it was on a blog I follow Botanical colors and on Fridays she shares different things about dyeing  here is the link

      Happy Saturday everyone