Fiberfest the weekend of September 6th and 7th in Almonte, ON

Hi all! If you are in the Ottawa area the weekend of September 6th and 7th I hope that you will check out Fiberfest in Almonte, ON. There will be lots of various displays including the Hoffman Challenge quilts, a quilt show, vendors and demonstrations. I will be helping out with the rug hooking demonstrations this weekend. It will just be an informal hook-in with some of our rugs on display to promote rug hooking to the public. Hopefully it will generate some intrest in the art and show people what traditional rug hooking is as opposed to latch-hooking.

I was contacted by a very nice woman from the Gananoque area. She and her fellow hookers are making a wonderful rug to raise money for the women of the Congo. A few of them will be bringing thier wonderful rug to display at our Fiberfest booth on Sunday afternoon and to join in our hook-in for a couple of hours. I think that the rug looks absolutely stunning and I can't wait to see it in person! If you would like to check out the rug and the blog these ladies started please check out Women Matters Rug Art web site. The colours in this rug are rick and wonderful.

Some links!

Hi all! Summer has finally started to be a bit nicer here for us! We had a few days finally without rain and it actually feels like a treat!

I thought that I would post a couple links for everyone if you are interested in a couple hooking techniques.

Laurie's Hooking Tips and Tricks

Gene Shepherd's Rug Hooking Web site has some wonderful information on it and even a free video for you to watch.

Just a short post but I thought that these link might just be useful to some of you :)

Rug Hooking

Dulcy asked for some progress on the rug hooked stool cover I have been working on so I thought that I would share. I have been working on this for a while now but to be honest I haven't touched it since June LOL! It just seems to be too hot to be working with wool right now. I used Gene Shepherds's technique for making the circles that he outlines in the Rug Hooker's Bible and in his DVD's. When I brought this to the rug hookers guild everyone was amazed that the circles were actually round. I had no idea when I started this that circles were actually apparently hard :)


We went to the Museum of Civilzation today in Hull and they had a wonderful exhibit on Quebec Folk Art. And, what do you think that they had but some hooked rugs! It was wonderful to see them! So, I thought that I would share a couple of pictures. If you can get to the museum to see the exhibit it is really wonderful! The odd thing was though that there weren't any quilts! I love the colours in these rugs! They are so colourful and vibrant and the whimsy in these rugs is just amazing.



These two rugs are more pictorial and really show a scene from life. I like how the words are incorporated right into the rugs. You can see how the rugs are displayed right in with the other peices of folk art. There was carving, painting, mosaics, hooked rugs, drawing etc. It was a very diverse display. They also had a nice picture of a woman pulling some loops which I liked.

I hope that you enjoyed the pictures and I think that the stool cover is coming along fine! Slow but fine :)

Wedding Quilt with Curved Piecing

Hi all! As promised here is a couple of pictures of the quilt that i just completed for a friends wedding in June. this was a completely last minute finish but I still think that it turned out nicely :) I was turning the binding to the back on the plane and in the hotel a few hours before the wedding. It is a free-form curved piecing pattern called Eureka by Maple Island Quilts by Debbie Bowles. I just loved using batiks in this quilt. The batiks made the piecing really easy and the IDT on my Pfaff sewing machine made the curves come together without using even one pin. Amazing :) Sorry you'll have to look at the picture sideways for now I will change it in a bit LOL!

Here is a close-up of the quilting. I used a gold rayon thread in the center with my free-form meander that I like to do in the center and two different colors of purple rayon thread in the boarder. I quilted the boarder using a double stitch flame feather to add to the funky effect of it. The backing was also a batik wide back that my LQS had and I loved the effect of having batik on the top and the backing.

I hope that they like the quilt.