Since I can’t take the afternoon heat lately, I’ve been working (finally) on a set of chair seats in honor of cats who have owned me. The first one (described in this post) is Sandy and Rori looking out the window. I used my homespun and millspun hand dyed yarns, all of which are wool/ mohair blends (details). The backing is 100% cotton Monk’s Cloth.
I designed Blue Skies yarn with variegated blues and a bit of white here and there to look like the sky in weaving and rug hooking. Similarly I designed Forest Dreams with primarily greens and a bit of blue to be used in weaving and rug hooking for broad expanses of trees or a forest with just a hint of sky poking through. Here it is used for carpeting or a reflection of the outside grass.
 “View from the House” Chair Seat |
 Closeup of Sky, Clouds and Bird |
 Closeup of Grass and Edging |
Learnings
For this size “rug” (roughly 16″ x 14″), not much detail will show. Next in the series will be designed with less detail and the lettering will be made larger to show more clearly.
The Monk’s Cloth used was found hiding in my fabric stash (price was right!), but since it was 8×8 epi it was difficult to use for rug hooking. The design came out but it took more time and yarn than it should have because the yarn did not always stick into the fabric evenly. It was also hard to get the tension correct. After some searching I located 12-13 epi cotton Monk’s Cloth and ordered some for the rest of the series. The best price I found was from Earth Guild at $14/ yard (60 inch wide). The 8epi cloth was $4/ yard! It was not easy to find the right epi cloth because most web sites don’t list epi in the description.
Yarns Used
Info on the yarns used is given below. The picture links to the full description and creation details for the yarn where available.
| Sky: |  |
Sky Blue Hand Dyed (After Spinning) Millspun. Designed to look like sky with variegated blues for use in weaving and rug hooking. |
| Grass: |  |
Forest Dreams Hand Dyed (Before Spinning) Millspun. Designed to look like trees/ forest with variegated green and a touch of blue for use in weaving and rug hooking. |
| Cats: |  |
Tan White Tweed (for Sandy) Natural Color Millspun. Since natural black isn’t readily available in mohair (black mohair is dark grey at best) I bought a skein of Brown Sheep’s Lamb’s Pride Worsted Onyx from Alpaca Direct as they had the best price when I was shopping. It is a USA made 15% mohair/ 85% wool single ply yarn. I used this yarn for the black cat (Rori). |
| Clouds: |  |
Small amount hand spun natural DWF white mohair/ wool yarn. Sport White Millspun 2 Ply 59% Mohair 31% Shetland Wool. |
| Edging: |  |
Iris – Hand Dyed (After Spinning) Millspun |
| Birds: |  |
Natural Dark Grey DK 2Ply Millspun 68% Mohair 32% Shetland, Blue Faced Leicester Wool |
| Lettering and Cloud Outlining: | Small amount of hand spun, turkey baster hand dyed roving (white with small amounts of orange and blue). A ball of roving was soaked in water for an hour, then injected with colors using a turkey baster, heated to boiling for 30 minutes to set the colors, then washed before hand spinning. | |