A Couple Small Finishes

I made this little hooked piece from a kit I bought from Ali Strebel when she taught a workshop for our guild a month or two ago. After thinking about how to finish it, I decided to make it a pillow with proddy fringe and I like the way it turned out.

Usually when I make a pillow, I sew all around the outside edge leaving an opening so it can be stuffed. Then I sew the opening closed by hand. However, I've learned that the seam allowance I  take when hand sewing isn't always accurate, and then the piece gets skewed a bit.  Now I usually piece the back of the pillow and leave an opening in that. Then I sew completely around the outside edge - in this case it was 1/2" from the last row of hooking. I turn the pillow inside out - then stuff it and sew the opening on the backing fabric closed. 

I added two rows of proddy fringe in the 1/2" seam allowance - for the back row I used all brown fabric, and on the front row I alternated between brown, blue and red.

I do like the way it turned out, but it sure did use a LOT of my wool fabric! I think I used more fabric for the fringe than I did to do the actual hooking! Can't imagine how much would be used if an entire rug was prodded! I don't think I'll do this finish very often just because of that reason. Oh, and one more piece of information - I tried to use my rug hook to bring the fringe through the linen backing, but it kept pulling the white polyfil out - so I ended up using a hemostat instead and it worked wonderfully!

Another project I recently finished was turning all my little hooked pieces into tiny pillows. 

Here they are displayed on my coffee table in an old sifter. 

The Utah Hook-In was held over the weekend. I write the blog for the Guild, so if you would like to see some of the rugs that were on display there, you can check it out here.