When you are flying to camp it's hard to take rugs along for show and tell. When I've attended camp and the teacher didn't bring rugs along, I was a little disappointed. But I fully appreciate why teachers leave rugs at home if they aren't driving to camp. It's hard to trust your rugs to the airline baggage check or shipping them.
A couple weeks ago I had one of those 3:00 a.m. moments and I decided to hook some small mats I call "Little Scrappers." They are only 8 x 11 inches and made entirely from wool scraps vs. new yardage. I can easily add the mats to my carry-on bag for air travel. Each was hooked with a teaching point in mind to discuss old style techniques and/or finishing.
These little mats are so darn cute I am hooked on making them. And they hook up fast. I'm almost of the opinion I could go on a one year sabbatical dedicated to only hooking little mats. Maybe that would use up my stash of worms, worms, worms.
Here are some examples of my Little Scrappers stash buster mats which I am also offering as pattern panels from smaller pieces of linen left over from making larger patterns. I also include ideas for hooking and finishing off the mats with the pattern panel.
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| Antique Roosters |
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| Little Scrappy Dog |
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| Peacock |
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| Two Cats |
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| three Cats |
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| Hit and Miss Hens |
I also hooked this round mat I'm calling "Can You See Me Vintage Birds" to test some muted background colors and some intentional and extreme higgly-piggly type hooking (high, low, medium loops all mixed up instead of one consistent loop height). I had a good thing going with the high, low, medium mix in the blue outside circle, but when I pressed/steamed the rug it flattened the loops to an even height. So much for that experiment.
I want to point out something about this rug that I did intuitively and later found that my intuition was spot on. I try to understand contrast in rugs because getting the contrast just right to make a rug look old is tricky. I needed to give the birds some contrast; they were melding right into the muted beige background (which happens to be one of my favorite wool choices for a vintage look). I didn't really want to outline them, but I'm not adverse to outlining because it was a frequent feature of old rugs. But I also didn't want a very noticeable outline. So my gut said to use the opposite of blue on the color wheel.
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| Can You See Me Vintage Birds mat by Kathy Clark, Briarwood Folk Art |
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