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Sail from Sydney to New Zealand and return with Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines

departing March 30, 2016 and returning April 12, 2016.

Join Susie Stephenson and Heather Horsfall on the

Rug hooking adventure of a lifetime

as they visit Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific.

In addition there is a 6-day pre-cruise tour of Sydney and Mollymook.

Susie Stephenson is a folk, fiber and rug hooking artist who owns Stephenson Fiber Arts, a rughooking studio in Edgecomb, Maine.  She and her husband, Tom, have a farm where they raise Jacob Sheep and Angora Goats.  Susie is the author of Designing and  Hooking Primitive Rugs.

Heather Horsfall hooks and teaches art in Nova Scotia.  She has a background in visual art and administration.  She hosts creative adventures in the three places she and her partner call home Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Baja, Mexico.

Miriam Miller, President Emeritus, Australian Rugmakers Guild, is a rughooking instructor and author of Proggy & Hooky Rugs, the only Australian book on rug hooking. Miriam has welcomed many visiting International and Australian rug hookers to her Rug Room at Narrawilly Farm, Milton in the Mollymook area.(photo, Gillian Lett, Milton Ulladulla Times)

For more details about

Cruise Holidays’ 4th Rug Hooking Adventure  :-

Contact Melanie Furlong, Group Travel Specialist

email:   melanie@cruiseholidays.com

telephone:      +1 (902)865-6992

The January/February 2015 issue of Rug Hooking Magazine contains an in depth article by Sue Lange, South Australia, on Tony Bomford (1927-2003) and features eight images from his collection of 18 complex and mathematical hooked rugs.

Bomford’s rugs are latch hooked using short pieces of wool yarn, however the designs could be created using other rug hooking techniques.  After his death in 2003 several of Tony’s rugs were accepted into the collection of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. His unpublished rug book was bequeathed by Tony to the National Library of Australia, Canberra.

In her article Sue says  –

” In 2004 Dr Dunham of the University of Minnesota  published the first of two academic papers featuring Tony’s hyperbolic rug. If these geometric patterns fascinate you and you’d like to find out more, contact Dr. Doug Dunham at the University of Minnesota .”

Click this link to read more about the mathematical rugs  of  Tony Bomford, to read more about the life of the extraordinary engineer who hooked rugs, click this link:

http://www.bomford.net/IrishBomfords/Chapters/Chapter26/childpages/TonyBomfordObituary.htm

Magazine images are shown by permission of Rug Hooking Magazine

 While  it’s exciting to pull the magazine from your mailbox and start flipping through it deciding which articles to read first, international postage makes subscribing more expensive for those of us in Australia.

Click Digital Subscription  and see how to avoid this additional expense.

It’s great to see the Australian Connection continue in this magazine which features creative, artistic and instructional articles. 

This is not the first  article by an Australian rug hooker or about Australian rugmakers. Sue has had other articles published in Rug Hooking Magazine and so have I (Jo Franco).  Plus several articles and images were published by members of TIGHR after they visited Australia for the 2012 Triennial Conference of The Internationale Guild of Handhooking Rugmakers.    

Even earlier, there was an interesting article published in Rug hooking Magazine,  July/August 1990 by Lee Pattinson (dec) telling of the history of rug making in Australia and mentioning the amazing body of work by fibre artist Isobel Foster from Victoria. 

Some of Isobel’s creations can be seen in the first entry of this Guild’s Facebook timeline. I took these photos  (with Isobel’s permission) when I traveled from Western Australia to meet up with a group of rughookers from South Australia and Victoria to visit The Challenge of Colour Isobel Foster Retrospective Exhibition at:

 www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KnpPeXt_7Q

at the Burrinja Gallery in January 2014.

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Western Australia: Kira Mead’s Natural Dye Sampler

Kira dyed woolen blankets for her earlier Quillie rugs using food colouring – the results were colourful and bright.  

Hoping for some more muted tones she headed to the garden and the pantry.  

Below in her own words are her notes about these experiments: –

Notes :   Natural Dye Experiments

This started out as being a small venture into natural dyes.  I purely wanted to break up the plant material, put it in a jar and cover with hot water to see if dye would release.  They all did this, but some  of the liquid samples were too small to do any dyeing.  But I was so encouraged by the colours released I went further to see how they would dye my 100% Wool Blankets.

I started with Plumbago, Agapanthus, Red Geraniums, Passionfruit Skin, Red Rose Petals, Eucalyptus Tree Bark, Eucalyptus Leaves and Bracken Leaves. On the day of the dyeing experiment I also made up some Coffee Dye from Coffee Pods, Tea Bags and a good sploosh of Red Wine.

All natural materials showed great promise, but some of the samples were too small to do justice to the natural dye experiment, but I will certainly be revisiting them when more material is available.

The dyes were extracted by cutting up the samples, putting them in a glass jar and pouring over boiling water and leaving for a day and night.

The Plumbago was a lovely light violet, but not enough to dye with.  Some of the others like Agapanthus and Red Geranium I proceeded with, but there wasn’t enough dye liquid to do any kind of justice to it.  Next time I will get greater quantities and simmer on the stove top.

In the morning I soaked the off white wool blanket in a mixture of quite hot water and citric acid for an hour.  I had a sink full of hot water and added two large teaspoons of citric acid.  I have found from dyeing with food colouring, that this holds the colour well.

Material contents have been drained from the glass jars and liquid put in a saucepan on the stove.  Small sample strips of wool have been added to the liquid.  I have only simmered until the liquid ran dry.

Normally I would simmer for 45 minutes and then proceed with washing, but for the natural dyes I would like to try leaving overnight to get a deeper colour.

Wool sample has been taken from the stove and pictured in a wet state.

 Wool samples have then been hung to dry outside.

When dry wool samples have been washed in lukewarm water with wool wash and once again hung outside to dry.

A lot of the samples lost a lot of colour, I think due to them not having enough time on the stove to soak in the colour and not enough sample liquid.  Below is wool dyed and dried.

I’m a little disappointed nothing turned out Green or Blue.  I thought Bracken was supposed to produce Green.  Mine turned brown.  I was hoping Agapanthus would give me Blue, but this needs further exploration and more liquid dye.

The stand out winners were the strawberry Tops, Tea Bags, Red Wine and the Eucalyptus Leaves.

I would like to add that the Strawberry Tops caused the most amazing smell to waft through the house.

Even though this was a quick experiment and I didn’t initially intend to dye any material, those four came out with good colours which will only get better with a bit more time in the pot.

+ + +

“The Ties that Bind Us”

designed and hooked by Robin Inkpen, Donnybrook, Western Australia.

Christmas has come and gone, gifts have been opened and now the story and these images of a special rug (54cm x 87cm) created by Robin Inkpen can be shared.

In her own words – Robin says …….

There is a story behind this rug that I hooked as a present for my son-in-law Sandy.

His father had a large collection of neckties, collected during his life in business. Sadly, he died a few years ago.

My daughter gave me a bag full of these neckties saying

         “Mum you can probably use these in your rug hooking”.

                 I thanked her and put them away in my stash of fabrics and yarns.

Well, recently I pulled out the bag of ties and decided that I would hook a memory rug for Sandy for Christmas. 

It has been a very interesting project as the ties are made from so many different fabrics.  I unpicked each one, took out the lining and label and cut them into strips about 1/2 inch wide.

I drew a simple geometric pattern for the rug on a piece of hessian and started hooking.

 One tie to each triangle and any left-over hooked into the smaller triangles.

Some ties were fine patterned silk and some were woven wool. I had no idea how each one would hook.  Some had spots, some had stripes, some were patterned and some plain with a logo. It is difficult to determine which is which in the rug. I was initially amazed at how dark they were but then I thought “well, he probably always wore them with a white business shirt and dark suit”.

It has been a fascinating project both for me as the hooker and others who have seen me doing it.

Finally after I had whipped the edge, I attached all the small tie labels  over the whipping (well, not all. I hadn’t kept all of them)

 I gave it to Sandy for Christmas and he loves it!

From Western Australia –

Kira Mead’s post on the Guild’s Facebook page has gone viral.

In just a few days there have been over 3,000 views and 30 shares –

but it’s the number of comments that have really been interesting.

 Usually a Facebook post goes up on the Guild page after a Blog has been published  on the Guild website; but this time, it’s the other way around.

The image shown above was posted on Facebook because it was interesting, creative and different.  There’s been such a fantastic response and so many comments, it warrants further explanation and more images of quillies (standing wool rugs) by Kira.

Kira was unaware she was using an ancient technique to create her rugs.  She didn’t know about “standing wool rugs” or the term “quillie” which comes from Quilling (or paper filigree) an art form involving the use of strips of paper, rolled, shaped and glued together to create decorative designs.  Quilling was also combined or married with other techniques such as embroidery and painting……and rug hooking.

I checked out the term on Wikipedia after remembering having read about quillie rugs in American rug hooking newsletters and also the quillie brooches I’d been given, made by Canadian friends, with strips of wool fabric left over from their rug hooking projects,

 Kira explained that she was researching up-cycling wool blankets online and found “Accidental Carpet” and just had to give it a go.

Quillies can be created by stitching or gluing (there were many comments on Facebook about the different methods)

The technique Kira discovered made use of a hot glue gun and strips of blankets.

Kira said :

” I absolutely fell in love with them, but wanted to put my own spin on it, which is what you can see in this rug. (above)

It was made from a couple of very old off-white, stained blankets.   The owner couldn’t bear to donate them to the op shop because she knew they’d be used as dog blankets.  They were sentimental to her because they were her late mothers.  When I told her what I had planned, she happily let me have them and is delighted with how they have been used.   They have been dyed with food dye and have a tie-dye look to them.”

Here are more of Kira’s rugs :-

Rose Gelato