Some Nice Rugs To Share

I drove to SLC for a rug hooking meeting today - I missed it last month because of our trip to Santa Fe, so it was nice to visit with the ladies and catch up on all their news.

Yvonne has finished hooking her Halloween rug and she was busy stitching the binding down. It's pretty big - about 36" x 40" or so - and she says she won't ever make one this big for a holiday that will only have it displayed for a few weeks of the year - way too much work for that! There's so many fun details in this rug - the spider web - the checkerboard - the bright red fingernails - and all those fun pumpkin faces!

Myra is working on a long runner - I think it'll be about 48" when it's done. She's planned the colors to go in her front living room - very pretty! I love that there a little squiggles of color in each diamond that are slightly different to make it more interesting to look at.

Nancy is working on a geometric that I really like.

This is the last rug Nancy made after taking her inspiration from a woven Indian tapestry.

And here it is displayed in front of the couch in her sitting room - the colors are so perfect
together!

I'm headed to CA for a few days of visiting family. I plan on hosting a giveaway here on my blog when I get back so you rug hookers will have that to look forward to. (There will be  WOOL involved!)

Quilt Meeting

We met at Janet's house last week for our monthly get-together. She had all the supplies on hand and taught us how to make these fun wet felted acorns. I have seen them all over blogland so I was tickled to try my hand at doing it.

She showed us this beautiful vintage dresden plate quilt she recently purchased at the thrift store for $9 - can you believe that?

She showed us this cute necklace she had made from a thrift store t-shirt. It was v-neck to start with and she just cut off the ribbing around the top. Then she cut up the t-shirt itself to make the rosette flowers, and stitched them onto the ribbing all the way around. Finishing touch was the embellishment dangling in the center.

 She's gotten into paper crafts a lot lately and shared these little books she made using manilla folders that had been folded and stitched and embellished - very cute!

A New Quilt and a New Quilting Friend

Dawn Heese - of Linen Closet Quilts - posted a free quilt pattern called Folk Art Tribute on her blog awhile ago. I  made all the blocks as she shared them month by month.  I've finally gotten them all sewn together and now I need to get a border on it to finish it - then the quilting. I did all the applique using an invisible machine applique technique that I learned in a Kim Diehl class a few years ago. (BTW - I just visited Kim's website and learned that she has cancelled all her classes because of health issues - so sad!)

My good friend Clydene became friends with a quilter who lives in Holland named Yvonne. Yvonne and her husband  Alex were here in Utah for an extended stay recently and the two of them made plans to meet face-to-face for the first time. I was really pleased when Clydene invited me to tag along with her for the meeting - we spent about an hour having lunch all together in Park City and it was so much fun. Yvonne has been blogging all about her vacation so her quilting friends back home could see what she's been doing. It's been fun to read her blog posts and see Utah through the eyes of a visitor from out of the country. Here's a picture of the three of us that Yvonne's hubby snapped just before we parted ways. You can read Yvonne's blog here.

She loves the mountains of Utah because in Holland everything is very flat - much of it built below sea level so there are dikes built to hold back the waters. Holland is also very small - she said they could fit three of their country inside of Utah's borders. It makes me appreciate the natural beauty of my everyday surroundings more when I realize that other people don't have that! It was really nice meeting her.

First Tuesday Group

Yesterday we held our monthly meeting at Tonia's house. She showed us one of her newly finished rug projects that was hanging on one of the bedroom walls. This patriotic fish is a pattern in one of Polly Minick's books.

And this will be a three dimensional sheep when she finishes the hooking and sews the two parts together.

Appropriately enough there were two pumpkin rugs being worked on. Marliss is doing this one...

.....and this is Sharon's. Both are very cute, and even though they both have crows and pumpkins, they have a very different feel to them.

Michelle is making some big loopy flowers that she will eventually attach to sticks from her yard so she can arrange a bouquet of them in a vase.

A couple months ago I received an email from a gal who knew she would be visiting Utah in October, and she asked if there were any rug hooking meetings she could attend. Turns out her timing was perfect, so this is a picture of our special visitor Jane from Michigan who was able to spend the day with us.

She brought a very small  project to work on and had a collapsible frame to make it easier to fit in her suitcase - such cute sheep!

And everyone LOVED the purse she was carrying that was made with a geometric design and fun bright colors. She bought the pattern from Perennial Blessings, and it's called Flapjacks - because of the round shapes used in it.

She crocheted the seams together with some green yarn she dyed to match - so I  got a close-up picture of that, but I forgot to show the fun lining fabric that she used.

We had a delicious homemade minestrone soup for lunch and I think everyone really enjoyed the day!