while you're ahead…

… actually this is not strictly correct, I should be saying ‘adventures in needle punching and rug hooking given I’ve playing around with both on the same piece.

I don’t know what it is about this medium/craft, call it what you wish, that has captured my imagination… but I can’t get enough.  I’m still a total rookie, my stitches are not all that even… and I need to learn more about how to finish off each piece, but in the meantime I’m having lots of fun.

This time I wanted to try mixing needle punching and rug hooking and try different materials.

First of all a high(wish) woven hessian for the backing seemed to have worked well… it holds the wool/fabric tightly which is good but I don’t think it would be terribly soft as for a pillow.  Don’t know.  I thought about washing it which will definitively soften it but I’m worried that it will not hold things into place if i do that;  I guess I’ll just have to try and see.

the strips of indigo dyed sheets look great… but oh boy is that a slow process or what!

here you can see some rug wool, strips of Mr M cashmere jumper (a bit of an accident that one… oops), other wool and some sort of experiment with a different stitch/plait… don’t know how to call it.  I guess I was trying to recreate those amazing woven hanging pieces that are all the rage on Insta these days (… well they are on my feed… I’m totally obsessed), full of different textures and colours…

I was really stuck on how to frame it and then I noticed that inside box frame there is another frame that keeps the glass away from the back and so I had the lightbulb moment to stable the hessian to this interior frame… and voila!

(this is the reverse of the piece before it got stapled and trimmed)

and here’s a detail of the front.  I think it really works.

My fingers are itching to make another one now… or maybe a cushion… yes a cushion in soft thick wool… yummy…

 

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