Rug Making Tutorial - my first vlog!

...now you'll know what I sound like :)

Last week I posted about my beginning adventures in rug making, and as promised, I have a tutorial for you today.  AND it's in the form of a vlog - can you believe it?  I seriously thought I would never do a video, but it was actually kinda fun, so if you like it I may do the occasional vlog.  Most of the things I do here are easily demonstrated by pictures, but this project really lends itself to a video.  So here we go - if you have any questions about this process, leave me a comment or email me at jessica(at)makeitlovely(dot)com.

Rug Making from Jessica Broyles on Vimeo.

So that's me. 
I wish you could leave video comments so I could hear what you have to say :)
I hope that you all have a great weekend - if you're here in the states, Happy Fourth!
xoxo
jessica

My New Obsession...

...rug making - part 1. 

I am so excited about this I feel like buying an RV and traveling the country convincing everyone to jump on the punch-needle rug-making bandwagon.
In fact...I started another blog called A Lovely Path to devote solely to rugs.

It's not going to be like this one where I post every day - I'll probably only post once a week or so but I feel so excited about this that I really want to spread the news. 

I also want to start a line of patterns (I have grand visions of appearing on Martha Stewart...;) 

Now - this is not a new craft.  In fact it is a very very old one and there are not many people still doing it.  

I'm not sure why because it's awesome!  But it needs some freshening up.  Most of the patterns are not that stylish (at least for my taste), but there is so much potential. 
So I started out making a chevron rug for my kitchen.
 
Here are the supplies I am using:

Amy Oxford's 1/4" Punch Needle

Rug making stand - kindly built by my talented husband

Monk's cloth

Wool strips - which I cut from 100% wool clothes found at thrift stores. 

 I brought the clothes home, cut the linings out and felted them myself by washing in hot water, then drying on high heat.  I then cut them into 1/4" strips using my rotary cutter.  This is a little bit of a process, but I bought an ENTIRE GROCERY CART full of wool clothes for $16.  I have a lot of wool.

Last summer when we first moved up here, we stayed with a couple from our church.  His mother is Amish and had made amazing rugs for their home - I mean they look like they're straight from Anthropologie.  I was smitten.  But he said she hand hooked them, and from what I can tell that takes a really long time....and as much as I wanted to do it, I was kind of dragging my feet.  Well, last week my mom and I were downtown and we wandered into a craft and stitch store.  We stumbled upon these punch needles and were delighted by the store-owner who gave us an impromptu lesson.  She showed me hooking and punching side by side and you COULD NOT tell the difference.  So I came home with the needle and monk's cloth and got to work. It goes so quickly and is a great thing to do while sitting around watching a movie or something. 
Here's how the front looks so far:

Stick around for a full tutorial on the process next week (and hopefully pictures of my finished rug!!)

Meanwhile, head on over to A Lovely Path to learn more about Punch-Needle Rug-Making!!

xoxo

jessica