Hi everyone – for the month of June, Ania has decided to showcase one of her recently completed projects. This project began as an online class that she joined in August, 2014, and it was finished in May, 2017.
Check out the rug below, and read on to learn about Ania’s process:
How did you find the class that lead to this rug?
I’m a member of Wanda Kerr’s “the Welcome Mat”, which is a website that is likely well known by a lot of hookers. The class is entitled “Painterly Poppies,” and it is available on the Groups page.
Poppies are my favorite flower – I love them. When I saw this class advertised back in 2014, I immediately signed up for the class because I had to see the pattern. The pattern and class are both by Wanda Kerr.
For this rug you purposefully used very wide strips – why and what was the process like?
I used a combination of #6, #4, and half inch torn strips. These were the biggest strips I’ve ever used – I loved them. I like the effect of the half inch torn strip, because they have a “cushion-y” effect.
They’re also great because tearing half inch strips of wool has a great therapeutic effect. You just cut and rip.
Where and why did you also use smaller strips of wool?
In the small spaces within the seed pods in the blooming poppies, and in the anthers I used smaller strips to help capture their feathery effect.
How did you approach color planning this project?
My favorite poppy is one that isn’t very common in the U.S. I have two now that grow in my perennial garden – they’re a deep, deep, dark red. I wanted to reproduce those poppies in this rug.
This involved pulling in wool from my stash that included some that I had purchased at the Salvation Army. These colors ranged from a very deep purple to a bright orange that I used as a highlight. The anthers also utilized wool that I had leftover from a prior project, my Peacock rug.
The only wool I dyed specifically for this project was the yellow I used for the background.
What were the biggest challenges of this project?
The background. The poppies were so huge and striking. The idea while creating this rug was to create a perspective of a small animal looking up at the blossoms and seeing the sky. I didn’t want to have anything in the background that involved the horizon, because I thought that would be too distracting. I wanted the poppies to be the wow factor.
I felt the yellow wool offered the backdrop of a sunny summer sky, and nicely offset the drama of the flowers.
Is there anything else of note about this project?
The way I dyed the yellow background was really fun. I dyed them using a new technique that I created. It was pretty fun to play around with that process! If any readers are interested in learning more about it, this technique is one that I teach in my dye classes. 🙂
This is also the first rug I’ve finished with an Art Gallery finish. I used an adaptation of Tickle Pie’s process, which can be found here. Instead of the canvas that Tickle Pie mentioned, I used stretcher bars. I love the effect! And the rug looks great on my wall.
If you have any comments or thoughts you’d like to share, leave them below!
My Mother's a Hooker 