If its Tuesday it Must be Magdalena Day Continued

The Maggie's Girls met yesterday to continue working on our Magdalena style rugs.  This gathering seems different from our other hookin meetings.  Our conversations about everyday life are the same, but this experience feels different.  Studying Magdalena is bringing us together with a focus, new imagination and discussion, and it is challenging comfort zones. 

Sandy and Denise have made progress through hooking on the sly at home.  We aren't publicly hooking these M rugs other than through info shared on this blog.  Unless a blog reader lives locally, and knows us, this project is top secret with our locals until we have the rugs finished.  We think our guild sisters will be very surprised when they see our rugs, especially Betty's rug!   Betty is a 3-4 cut fine shading florals hooker, so this project is way out of bounds.  She is really enjoying it too.

We had an active day.  Denise was ready to add lines, symbols and hit-n-miss to her rug.  We took pen to cloth and it was fun. 


Denise's rug before any lines or symbols are added.



Denise studies the Magdalena book for ideas.

Betty (left), Denise and Sandy have fun discussing ways to let
 their hair down and add lots of Magdalena business to the rug.

Symbols, echo lines and hit-n-miss has been added to Denise's design. 

Sandy continued hooking animals and has begun some echoing around the animals and a bit more hit-n-miss in the lower right. 

Sandy's rug in progress.



Sandy's cute little dog.

Sandy's bear.  Love the colors.

Betty has stayed true to circles, lots of circles, little bitty circles, 70+ in number.  She will start having fun when all those circles are finished. 

Betty's circles are coming along nicely!  I don't envy her on this, I've done my time with these circles.

I have to keep up with the others, so I started a new modified Magdalena design of the eagle rug, leaving out the crows on this version.   You can see by my linen backing, I have no problem adding lines, lines and lines.  I love the business of the M style.  I am not shy about it!

Eagle is hooked, just starting the background.  I am very happy with the eagle. 

By the end of the day I have begun the hit-n-miss under the eagle's
lower right wing.  I'm not sure I like it; it seems sort of mudy to me, but I won't know
for sure until I hook more of the background.  I also have to do something about
that black blob on the left wing.  It's not working for me.

I was studying some of the symbols used in the Magdalena Domestic Zoo pattern and tried to draw them out as reference points for today's gathering and discussion of M's background techniques.  Here's a copy of some of the symbols I drew and you are welcome to use them if you are designing a M style background.

Have fun and remember to hook outside the box!