latch hook rug

In the spirit of finishing things off, I finally finished a project I'd almost finished in June 2014 - see this post.  I'd then done a little bit more and put the photos into a blog post ready, it's been sitting in my dashboard since then!  Well, I finally finished it.

It was my latch hook rug.  The following two photos are the ones that have been hanging around for 2 years.

I was very pleased that the kit contained the right amount of wool, I even had some left overs.  They are sitting on a shelf in my craft room, I have no idea what I thought I would do with them!

This is where I'd left the project.  Completely hooked, but not finished off.  I know I'd spent a lot of time researching how to do it and only found posts about hooked rugs on hessian fabrics, not this kind on a canvas.  When I picked this up again a few weeks ago, I decided to just go for it.  I'd bought some herringbone tape which somewhere had recommended I use, and a very thick needle and some waxed linen thread.

I cut around the canvas, leaving 3 threads.  I folded this over to the back and whip stitched it to the canvas, making sure it wasn't showing through on the front.

Look at the size of that needle!  You don't want to know how many times I stabbed myself with the damn thing!  It was a lot...  When it was all secured down, I sewed the herringbone tape over the top to neaten it.  I genuinely had no idea what I was doing!

I stitched using a running stitch, wow did that heavy thread and that massive needle hurt my hands!

The whole time I was making this, I was trying to think of somewhere to put it.  Mr CA asked me a few times and I just said I didn't know.  When I'd finished sewing on the tape, I plonked it down in front of the fire to get it off the sofa.  Yep, that'll do, I can live there!  And yes, that is an Easter egg.  Mr CA's.  He's not bothered about chocolate so he won't eat it, but I'm not allowed to eat it either!

so close, so, so close

The hooked rug is SOOOO close to being finished.  So, so close... 

Nope, closer than that, more like this...

See that?

And guess what?  I've run out of red wool.  They didn't give me enough in the kit.  I got an extra pack of the blue, but not enough red.  I emailed Coats who own Anchor.  The email bounced back...  I've found an online shop that sells Anchor rug wool, I bought all three reds they had in the hope that one of them matches.  Delivery will be 10 days!  What??  Get up to date shop, 10 days is a LIFETIME... well maybe not, but I'm running out of time to get this finished!

Not to forget Mr Mosaic...

Grouted!  Now to find my paint brush...



Related posts

starting the rug
The rug 3/4 done
mosaic - tiling done

In progress

I am crap at progress posts.  Really, really crap at them.  I never post them.  Must try harder.

Remember this?

Yes, that's right, it's my Union FLAG rug.  It's on my  2014 FAL list, and also is this month's Something Old, Something New goal.  I want it finished.  

Not doing so badly so far!  The random bits of wool aren't so random.  I marked them out every 10x10 stitches to give me something to mark my progress.  There were 52 squares to fill.  Now there are 33.  

Speaking of the  2014 FAL.  I actually have very little to nominate for my quarter 3 projects.  I have several WIP needlework projects, but all of them are large and so I'll only want to nominate one or two.  I know that I have a massive list of what I call WIPs, but in reality, most are just kits, or supplies I've bought for particular projects.

The solution?  I'm going to start a load of projects!  Yep, start, not finish.  Above are 2 bag kits, a bunny softie pattern, the scraps from the dining chairs to make placemats with, a reindeer kit, a stained glass panel using fusible bias and my Cuzco bundle for making a Stained Glass quilt.

Like the good girl that I am, I got started cutting out the fabric for the stained glass quilt.  Cutting.  Lots of cutting...  Don't hold your breath on any of these projects, it's going to take at least a month to get them all started. Am I crazy??

What have I been up to?

Not blogging, that's for sure!  I'm struggling to get back in the rhythm of it, bear with me...

There has been some craft going on though.

A bit of this:

A smattering of this:

A dose of this:

A handful of this:

A smidgin of this:

A soupçon of this:

And a LOT of this:

You know me, attention span of a gnat... maybe my word for '14 should be "focus"!

How to be a hooker

Last year for my birthday I got a latch hook kit.  I think this is called Looker Hooking in the US?  It's of a Union Flag and it's been sitting waiting for me for ages.  I kept putting it off as I knew I'd have to read the instructions.  Well that took all of 2 minutes!  Sometimes I just don't understand how my brain works.

I found it a little tricky at first, but soon got in to a rhythm.  There's about an hour and a half's work in there, so this is going to be a long job!

It's comes with a pre-printed canvas and lots of pre-cut strands of yarn.  You also get the tool.  It took me a while to fathom out how the hook worked as I wasn't following the instructions correctly, it's actually really easy so I thought I'd show you too.

Here's the yarn you get with the kit.  You could of course buy a latch hook, some yarn and a piece of canvas and make up your own design.  There may be freebies on line too.

You hook onto the horizontal bars, not vertical which I'm cunningly showing you in this sideways picture above that makes it seem like I'm lying!

The hook goes all the way under a double "thread" and the hook is open.  The movable part of the hook needs to be on top of the "threads".

Wrap your yarn around the hook...

Then put the two ends of the yarn under the hook.

Then simply pull through.  It will form a little knot like this.  There's a name for this knot but it escapes me.  Pull the yarn ends to tighten and move on.  It gets a bit painful on the hands, not from the action of hooking, but where my hands are rubbing on the canvas.  It's a lot easier when I've got some done and can rest a hand on it.