Soon after I started to chronicle work on the Magdalena Menagerie (MM) rug, Trudy from Virginia contacted me about the availability of the pattern. I usually sell patterns once I have a picture of the finished rug, but Trudy was willing to go by my mock-up photo. Yesterday, Trudy sent me pictures of her progress and I am ecstatic to see it. Isn't this rug incredible?! I LOVE it and I WANT it!
The pattern size Trudy is working on is the smaller version (44" x 30") and she has progressed faster than I have. I am in love with her rug, and there's a lot for me to learn from how she's hooking it. I am showing pictures of her rug followed by mine to display the differences and a comparison of her work to mine. Here's side by side photos of the rugs.
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| Trudy's rug. |
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| My rug. |
When comparing the two rugs, I immediately notice a difference in the background. Trudy used several background wools that blend nicely, but reduced the use of miscellaneous darker lines running through the background. Her rug is more calm, and the eye is less distracted from the dogs, crows and the lollipop bush. I have been trying to mimic Magdalena Briner Eby's style, and "busy" is the name of the game according to Magdalena's rugs. While I may have accomplished mimicking Magdalena, something was bothering me about my rug, and now I see the problem: it's too busy, Magdalena style or not.
I know it is still early to critique my rug, since a limited amount of background has been added, but Trudy's rug has already influenced me to remove the numerous busy lines I have strewn about my lollipop bush and crows. Here are pictures of the dogs close-up for comparison.
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| Trudy's left dog. |
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My left dog. Note the lines around the dog's chest and paw, near the crow and aside
the lollipop bush. Now I see that these make this area too busy. |
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| Trudy's right dog. |
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| My right dog. He's also got a lot of lines adjacent to his chest. |
Here's another point of difference: I've been using multiple colors in the hit-n-miss areas I've hooked so far, and Trudy has used fewer colors but she made each color wider in width. This is easier on the eye than my busy, row after row color change. I like Trudy's style better. Here are a few more examples to show the differences.
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Trudy's rug with less squiggly lines strewn about than mine, below.
This allows the lollipop bush and crows to stand out (pop) without all the competition I added. |
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| My rug is busy and a little wild. It makes my head hurt! I'm even embarrassed to show it now! |
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| Trudy's rug with wider hit-n-miss lines than my multiple colors. |
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| My rug, again too busy and the multi-line, multi-color hit-n-miss is competing with the crow. |
I also love Trudy's dogs, they are very cool! But I like my Frick and Frack dogs too, so they will stay as they are for now.... but watch out, they may shed heavily and look different as time goes by!
Isn't it fun and exciting how we can learn from each other? I am so glad to see Trudy's rug before I went further in hooking. Her influence has saved me from many headaches. Reverse hooking, here I come!
Thank you Trudy for your influence!
