ISSN 2207-001X – 12thMarch 2019
An update to the Guild website caused the formatting of the Blog to change and your Editor could not cope with something “new” – thankfully Judi Tompkins, Guild webmaster, has sorted it out for me and I’m back to reporting on rughooking activities around the country.
Starting in Queensland –
“Caught” a hooked piece lashed into a driftwood frame, featured in a Sunshine Coast Daily article titled “From Rags to Riches in Rughooking – a Rag Rug Mini Expo”, held in Pomona, Qld on March 9th.
Judi Tompkins accompanied by Bea, Judy O and Anne, members of the Sunshine Coast RugCrafters travelled north to Pomona, about an hours drive from Beerwah where the group meets, and gave demonstrations of different rug making techniques at the event organized by Beany Palmer. Below the Sunshine Coast RugCrafters demonstration tables are set up ready for visitors.
Articles created and displayed by the Sunshine Coast RugCrafters group showing examples of the different rug hooking techniques created much interest.
One of the visitors, Valerie Willy, a sculptor and creator of raku ceramics , was particularly taken with the Locker hooking display. Valerie studied the literature, and before long was explaining it to another visitor.
and then began teaching more visitors. The locker-hooked placemats seen in these images were made by Judi Tompkins. There is a found example of “Australian locker hooking” created with rovings and surprisingly on a Hessian backing.
Eager to give it a try, many people reused this small piece of backing found in Judi’s tool box.
Judy Owen a Sunshine Coast RugCrafter, gave a hands-on demonstration of traditional rugmaking utilizing a long stretcher frame so more people could have-a-go.
Here’s Judy, peeking in to see how the new rug hookers are managing.
Beany, organizer of the event, taught Toothbrush rugmaking (Narlbinding)
and here is a demonstration of the all important “starting point” for the toothbrush rugmaking – this is the tricky part, the rest is simple. These rugs resemble crocheted rugs.
By the end of the day 60 people had done the rounds of the demonstrations and been amazed at what can be created using the various rug hooking techniques, and “upcycled” fabric.
Still in Queensland …..
Mt. Tamborine, south of Brisbane – February 15th was the Official Launch at Tamborine Mountain Library of the “Sew Local Sweat Shop”, a public art event, which actively engaged the community to sew shopping bags in a factory production line setting.
The Project concept – a Sewing Production Line – an interactive Performance, was designed by Bec Andersen August 2018, and took place in a vacant shopfront at Flame Tree Plaza, Main Western Road Tamborine Mountain, March 5th – 10th, providing educational and community building opportunities to the participants and audience and the opportunity to engage passers-by to inspire and uplift, to educate and share and commune.
The plan was to teach sewing skills to new people, inform them about sustainability and produce hand sewn shopping bags as a by-product, the bags to be distributed March 11th.
The aim of the “Sew Local Sweat Shop” was to educate the community about a whole series of current issues as well as the skills required to create the bags:
• Slow Fashion vs Fast Fashion
• Overuse of plastics in the Environment
• Cutting, sewing overlocking and printing.
• Upcycling Fabric into useful shopping bags
General Waste not Want not education.
Kudos to Bec for another successful community event. (This report was taken from Bec’s website www.becandersen.com and Facebook invitation.)
Further south in NEW SOUTH WALES ….
There is a new rug hooking group in the Sydney metropolitan area, formed by Martha Birch – they meet the 2nd Saturday of the month in Epping. You can find them on Facebook – their open group is called “From Rags to Rugs, Sydney Rug Hookers” – https://www.facebook.com/groups/387146415123046/
Theresa attended one of Martha’s first workshops in 2018 and here she shows her finished first rug, started at the end of last year.
There are some old hand made rugs archived in museums around Australia, but you don’t see any still in use as you do in the Northern Hemisphere. This rug was bought to the Epping group for “show n tell” – it was made forty plus years ago from recycled fabric and looks like a SEMCO pattern.
The Sydney group was formed after much interest was shown in rug hooking last year at the Sydney Craft and Quilt Show in Darling harbour.
Martha will have an Australian Rugmaker’s Guild table at Craft Fair again this year – you can check the link to sign up for Fair News and purchase tickets.
Milton, New South Wales ….
Things have not exactly been quiet around Miriam’s Rug Room – the Narrawilly Proggy Rugmakers met twice a month, even through the holidays.
However, Miriam and Jacqui have been away again – they met up with Anne from Victoria at Jindabyne ski resort and had a few fun filled days, spinning, knitting, talking, walking, and sharing ideas, plus catching up with friends from other areas.
Miriam has not missed a beat – her newsletter “Connecting Us” has gone out every month since she and Jacqui returned home in December.
with images of rugs made by the many friends she made at TIGHR and in their travels getting to and from the 2018 Triennial.
One of her friends from Canada, Nancy Simpson, is looking to connect with rug hookers in Quebec City – Nancy has a friend who lives in the Quebec City area who wants to meet up with other hookers and also find out where to purchase materials. If any of our Canadian readers are from that area Miriam would love to hear from you. You’ll find all of Miriam’s newsletters archived on this website under the Blog drop down menu
There is still much more to say about rug hooking in Australia – but it will have to wait until next time (soon now the computer problem is sorted) starting with Tasmania and working across the south coast to Western Australia.
Happy 2019 and RugHooking to all –
