SATURDAY'S CLASS & TIPP CITY RUGS ~ ~ ~

 These four gals came from Pittsburgh and Indiana to take my Funky Flower Purse class and I was so glad to have them here in my studio!  This is what they accomplished in a 6 hour class plus we took time out  for lunch and the 'house tour'!

Heidi, Charisse and Sue are local gals ~ they didn't have to travel too far to join us! I give them a choice of the purse background wool and all do basically the same pattern (my design) but have the choice of all kinds of materials that are here in the hooking room.

I teach several different hooking stitches, needle felting by hand and with my felting machine, proddy and wool applique!  We crammed a lot into our time together and as dear friend, Heidi, said at the end of the day "she was on overload"!!  It's a lot but they all hung in there and covered a lot of ground!

There were seven students and friend, Pam (in the pink shirt) came to hook and to help me serve lunch!  Thank goodness!  So nine of us in the hooking room was quite comfortable ~ it helps me to gauge how many I can take in a class for the future ~ and I think a couple more would make a nice full classroom! 

Most of the girls were from the class in Tipp City, so I asked them to bring their projects finished or not,  so I could share them with all of you!  This is Jackie's piece ~ she used the same bittersweet motif that I did but all her 'berries' are done in quilled wool, rolled wool, cats paws ~ whatever you choose to call it.  She added felting and some roving ~ it really is a great example of using alternative materials to make a design into a very artistic

rug!

Sue, wearing her lovely SKIF sweater (Nola brought these fabulous sweaters from St. Louis for us to purchase) , made her project into a pillow and used Karen Kahle's idea of prodding the edge to bring the hooked side and the wool backing together.  She did a great job ~ it looks just like Karen's finished project!!

Charisse did a mirror image of the turkey design along with oak leaves and acorns and she's doing a

crochet edging, which she left a little unfinished so she could show us how to do that.  It looks great, by the way!!!!!!!

Pam,  the lunch lady, brought hers along to work on ~ I love the purple turkey!  She did a great job on her stone fireplace, too ~ although, I think she mentioned that was a challenge to get it just right ~ and I think she did!!  Thank you, Pam, for being a good helper that day!

Here's my pal, Heidi ~ she hasn't worked on hers since we were in that class, but I wanted you to see her cute squirrel ~ if you click on the picture to enlarge, you can see that she used yarn for his tail ~ it's really quite cute!  And a spot dyed wool for the tree ~ really nice! If you remember, we were given paper patterns with various fall designs and then we made up our own rug pattern.  So all these rugs came from the same class but are vastly different ~ very interesting results!

Sue wasn't in our class but this is the rug she's working on ~ my friend, Maria Barton's pattern ~ it's a bigger pattern than I realized from just seeing a picture.  Sue will do a great job ~ she's a fun gal and a nice addition to our class that day!  When these girls finish their purses and send photos, I'll post them here for you to see ~ I think that they'll all be different but yet the same ~ I can't wait!!  They had so much fun, they're coming back in the spring for a proddy class!!! 

On Tuesday, MJ came to show me her 'first rug' done in a class here not long ago!  She did great ~ I love the texture in her crow ~ and we planned a chair pad for her next project!!  She's going to a hook-in and wanted approval that her hooking was good enough to do in public ~ I assured her it was!!! 

A long post today ~ I hope you're still hanging in there ~ it's been a busy week here, as usual!  Tonite we're going to our Homebuilders' annual charity auction and I have no gift to donate!! So, I have to head out of here and find some nice Christmasy type thing to take and hope they'll bid high ~ we adopt needy kids at Christmas so we need lots of high bids tonite!  Tomorrow, Heidi and I go hooking with the group in Akron ~ tomorrow night is the opening party for The Art Center's Holiday Fair and Saturday, I think we have a plan with Sonny's daughter!  Yikes!!  I better get out my roller skates!! 

Hope you've all had a good week ~ and get rested up because the holiday season is approaching at warp speed (my new saying)!  Take care ~
Alice