The group has been working all year towards our new exhibition…which this year is a virtual exhibition for our web pages. Normally we dont name the individual rug makers, but this exhibition showcases the lovely work done by some of our members.
The theme of the exhibition was to take inspiration from one of the books in our rug making library, and be inspired either by a design or a technique, or to find inspiration from another source. With such an inventive group, the interpretation has been wide.
If you like our work, and want to see more, we have a small exhibition at East Riddleston Hall until the end of September 2011.
Hannah Southern moved to a tall end of terrace stone house just before Christmas, and she has had time to make this lovely wool hooked picture of this typical Northern Terrace.
Freda Ellis was inspired by a picture of a bookcase, and decided to hook her own bookcase at home. The first picture is her design process. The rug is quite long, so I have photographed it in two halves.
Linda Murray took her inspiration from a tile made by a woman in a small village in Peru where a potter had established a small workshop.The rug is hooked in wool on hessian. The design indicates the sea, mountains, sun, stars and the Condor.
Jenny Salton has been knitting a rug called “Seaside Blue”. It is made with t-shirt material, bought as a three metre tube, and knitted on 12mm needles. It forms a dense stiff rug. She told us that it took a whole day to cut the material into one long strip… no joins.. the ball of material was huge.
Margaret Kenny says that this hooked rug was inspired by an article in a rug hooking magazine. The original was a group project by women who wanted to raise money for an African village by selling the finished wall hanging. Margaret designed the two women with the fruit.
Veronica Metcalfe has still to finish this prodded wool rug, the design is taken from a traditional Locker hooking pattern. She is working it on an old sack. I love the juxtaposition of the lettering and darning.
Margaret Halff was inspired by the squares in Cindy Murrays book on locker hooking.
This is the locker hook rug she made. She says that she is not a very adventurous rug hooker and tends to stick to simple locker hooking. She says that doing the squares was not as easy as the usual straight lines, but she is pleased with the result… although a little hard on the fingers… and we all certainly thought it worth the time.
Kay Royce has made a traditional prodded rug using all wool tweed in sombre colours called ” Grandmas Rug-Memoires of Beamish”
Brenda Jarman also has a wartime theme to her prodded 1940s style rug.
Sue Barrass has made a prodded rug inspired by William Wordsworth’s poem “My Heart leaps up when I behold”.. a rainbow in the sky. It is made with 36 t-shirts, the prodding took 90 days at one hour a day. Look carefully at the colour mixing in each segment..
Diane West is in process of completing a finely hooked piece called “Lora” inspired by her daughters 21st birthday photo.
Keri Di Souza has been working each meeting on her first rag rug. She choose blues and greens, all the materials are recycled clothing no longer fit to be worn, including her brothers old socks…
Lily Barton has used her grandsons holiday alarm clock as inspiration for her cockerel.
Penny Godfrey has been working on a variety of projects. she has been exploring the use of ruffles in various techniques throughout the year, and this bag was adapted from a pattern in “Quilted bags and purses” by Mary Jo Hiney. This is a small version of a rug I eventually hope to make using this technique.
Continuing the ruffle theme, this tea mat was made using a ruffler on the sewing machine. It is glue gunned together.
and in use on the garden table…
I am also interested in mixing techniques together, and after trying my hand at crocheting a granny square in our tent visiting Woolfest this year, I decided to make it into a small bag to take to the music festival at Latitude. I hooked the surround with some lacy material left over from Dianes Baildon Community project, and machine knitted the back to save time.
My final piece was also inspired by crochet. I had a old cotton crochet top by Gap that I no longer wear, and decided to update it with crochet flowers. The surface crochet technique I used on the shoulders is the same as the way you can make crochet rugs. Many moons ago I had also acquired a pair of lace sleeves from our fabric swap at the group, and they fitted the top perfectly.. thanks Amy…
We all hope you have enjoyed this exhibition of some of our work… Let us know if you like it via our comments page.. tell your friends as well.
January 2011
The January meeting was busy inspite of the weather. Some gorgeous rugs and smaller items.
Row 1: A seat pad and hooked wool yarn picture inspired by the tapestry cushion cover on the right.
Row 2: A miniature traditional rug for a dollshouse in punch needle, a punch needle picture inspired by a Christmas card, and another hooked panel for the Baildon community centre.
Row 3: A ruffled folded cotton fabric experiment, and a rug made on the sewing machine from gathered strips of cotton.
Row4: “Falling stars” inspired by patchwork patterns.
February 2011
Mr John Wilson from Alpaca dreams talked to us about his firm, and proposals to bring alpaca spinning back to Bradford.
His web site is www.alpacadreams.co.uk
This is his wool.
Otherwise an inspiring mix of new rugs. The two small circles are for the Baildon community wall hanging.
The next rugs are contemporary takes on traditional patterns.
We were also shown a different way to make a wreath.
This is an unusual teacosy.
This flower is made in shades of lavender and the shirred rug is in shades of blue cotton.
March 2011
We have been donated a rug frame and some quite chunky prodders, for which we are very grateful.
There were two more lovely penny rugs on show as well.
Pink seems to be the colour of the month with these lovely cushions and rugs:
These two rugs are contrasting geometrics:
This rug was knitted from strips of cotton:
and this rug was made on the sewing machine:
and finally, a toothbrush rug made with cotton strips.
April meeting and Cober Hill
We were split between those at Cober Hill for a weekend of rug making, and a meeting at Bradford museum in April.
The Pictures below are from Cober Hill
We made a poem to celebrate our endeavours
The 2011 Cober Hill poem.
Off we set to Cober Hill,
Overflowing baskets, scraps from the mill.
Jenny hooks a tapestry of hearts,
Rainbow colours, choosing is an art.
Freda’s bookcase is tall and thin,
No clues to the treasures within.
Margaret, Veronica and Jenny hook the logos round,
Baildon will be ecologically sound.
For Keri and Margaret, the bus fails to stop,
They arrive in Scarborough in a strop.
Brenda hooks her flowers high and low,
Like the Waldobro rugs of long ago.
Penny braids all day, red, black and green,
There is not much rug to be seen.
Hannah is braiding- she is getting quite good,
But the bump in the middle?-not out of the wood!
Margaret is still hooking in locker,
We are quite unable to stop her.
Kay is filling her background in umber,
Remember it has to be finished by September.
Alan’s crossword is a hit,
We manage to complete most of it.
Pete’s quiz made us think of flowers and trees,
Willow, ash and heartsease.
Sally, Humber and Jess don’t make any rugs,
But these canines are partial to hugs.
Now its time to sweep the floor and pack,
No more laughter, hooking or rugs till we are back…
… two more geometrics to complete the show,
nowhere else for them to go.
May/June 2011
Two meetings combined in one. We are busy getting rugs ready for the ” virtual exhibition” that we are bringing to the July meeting for photographing, then uploading onto both these pages and Flickr, so there will be more photos to share next month.
We have been finishing braided rugs started at Cober Hill:
and mine has not got much further, but it was good to be able to show it to the group.
The idea of this Candle holder.. battery candles only… was shown to us at Cober Hill by Wendy, we have decided to make them for our Christmas exchange this year:
We also have two new wall hangings of members homes:
And another pictorial rug of a Cockeral.. quieter than the one that lives next door…
We have two new rugs based on traditional diamonds:
and a fleecy rug:
and a knitted rug.. sorry both not so good photos… but both lovely:
We had a short workshop in June on rug design using paper cutting as a source of inspiration. We had fun making cut out paper shapes, loosely based on patterns in an old rug book .
Hopefully some of these paper cuts will materialise as exciting rugs in future months…
September 2011
As well as our usual meeting we were also enchanted by a visit to see miniatures made by Lily and her husband. I have concentrated on photos of the miniature rugs, and of course there is a rug frame with a part completed rug, and even a rug beater! Its hard to imagine these are at dolls house scale…. When you have finished looking at the dolls house pictures, scroll down to see our meeting photos.
There was also a good variety of rugs at our September meeting, and we were pleased to welcome some visitors from Airedale and the Lunesdale groups.
The striped rug is made from strips of curtain fabric crocheted following the instructions in a recently acquired pamphlet we have in our library. Its quite chunky, and could be made neater by machine sewing the strips and also pre folding the strips.
The images below are of a peg loom woven rug using dolly pegs. Not as easy to use as the traditional dowels, but it does allow thick fabric on the warp.
We had some beautiful flower rugs to admire, contrast the fine hooking, and the effect from prodding tee shirt materials.
Another three delightful proddy rugs have been finished.. and they demonstrate the variety of finishes that can be achieved with this simple technique.
A family of carefully observed sheep in different varieties also came to visit:
and finally…. a lucky recycling group find has lead to the acquisition of a rug that is about twenty or more years old. It had to be both beaten and washed, as it had been infront of an open fire for many years.
Oct/Nov 2011 Meetings
It has been a busy month for the group with the exhibition at East Riddleston Hall to dismantle, and members working to finish various projects, so it seemed better to combine the two meetings here. We were delighted to hear that East Riddleston Hall won the Yorkshire small visitor attraction of the year at the recent awards at the white Rose Centre. We hope our exhibition helped to sway the judges! , but more likely it is the fantastic work that Carla Weatherall and the staff and volunteers have put into the Hall.. ..While our exhibition was there, the visitors had the chance to contribute to a new rug wall hanging for the Hall. It will be interesting for visitors to see this, and compare it with the older rugs around the Hall.
So the exhibition that started over two years ago at the Bradford Industrial museum is now finally put to bed. We will have lots more lovely rugs by the time we decide to start on a new exhibit. As a result of the exhibitions and the then newly launched web pages, we have become widely known in Yorkshire, and sometimes around the world, and also have been able to introduce rug making to a whole host of new friends.
Make sure that you scroll right down through this months post, there are some lovely rugs all the way through.
Before going onto our meetings, I just want to include this lovely image. Researching on the internet, it popped up, and I asked David Farrar the photographer, if I might add it to our pages. He kindly agreed, and told me that it was taken some years ago at the Ironbridge Gorge heritage museum. The picture is his copyright. If you want to see his other work his address is www.davidfarrarphotography.com
I wonder who the gentleman who is demonstrating the rug making is?
Woodhorn Matters made candle mats for their Christmas exchange last year, and we are following their example this year. This photo was apart of the demonstration of how to make them. Please note they are not for real candles…we use the battery type.
With Christmas on its way, there was a smattering of wreaths and trees at our November meeting.
In November we practised making wool flowers to integrate with our hooking. They can be used with proddy shaped leaves and flowers. I already had one flower loom set by Ronco, but was delighted by the variety of implements that the group brought along to the meeting.
This is my finished cushion, the threads were all sun dyed in kilner jars over the summer months.
The next pictures are some of the flower looms and french knitting devices that can be used for making the flowers. I also found this web site that has fantastic ideas for flower centres,www.knitting-and.com/small-looms/ but just type in flower looms and french knitting into Google and a whole new world opens up…
Some of the above French knitting looms are waiting for their pins…
Plastic versions of the crazy daisy can be bought on the net.
We did not use practical embroiderer, but maybe somebody will incorporate the wool flowers from it in the future.
More on Workshops, two of our members went to the Reeth rug retreat this year. they worked with Jennifer Manuel. You can see her work at www.fishereyerugs.blogspot.com and also on the reeth web page.
This is one of the two purses, back and front.
There were also two knitted rugs, one in teeshirt material, the other in french knitted yarn.
and this braided in rug
We were also lucky enough to see this beautiful wall hanging inspired by a Marc Chagall stained galss window .
and this first hooked rug of Salts Mill. There is a band of autumn heather running behind the mill.
and this seascape in Northumberland.
This shirred rug was inspired by an old rug stencil.
Dec 2011 Jan 2012
Because of health problems in my family, I missed these meetings, but one of the members has kindly held the fort and taken these pictures for me.
The Christmas exchange this year was making a small candle ring… Note only for battery candles.. not for anything with a flame for safety reasons..
The rest of the pictures are rugs brought to the meetings.. enjoy.