I spent another 9 hours laboring on the bear rug over the last 7 days (if not for holiday wrapping and cookie baking, it probably would have been more). This project is all mental – I started trying to trick my brain this week by making little circles and coves to fill in slowly. Breaking the bigger areas into manageable sections seems more rewarding than sitting and doing a long strand from bear-nose-to-bear-tail.
The good news: my fingers are getting more used to this so I’m less grumpy than last week at this time. I’m also getting better at the latch hooking movements. Faster.
The bad news: Each batch of fabric I dye is a little bit different. Still haven’t figured out how to even it out when I’m done, but I’m not worried about it yet.
I’ve tallied 21.5 total hours latch hooking on this project (not counting a few more hours for dying and cutting 8 yards of fabric to date).
If you missed the start of this crazy project, catch up here, and review my first week’s progress here.
Update: Fast forward yourself 2 weeks and see the finished rug here.
9 Comments
Lookin’ Good!
Huge progress!
Thanks Kate + Loren!
Looking good! Hang in there, it will be so very worth it when you’re done.
I made an up-cycled t-shirt rug for my son’s room and I was floored by how much time it took & how much fabric was used to make such a teeny-tiny itty bitty rug!
That you’re making a full sized area rug is either madness or genius, or both. Either way you’re some kind of DIY-Guru of epic proportions. :)
Thank you for your positive reinforcement, Martina! I can do it, I can do it, I can do it. It’s considerably more time consuming than I considered it would be.
“The bad news: Each batch of fabric I dye is a little bit different. Still haven’t figured out how to even it out when I’m done, but I’m not worried about it yet.”
You have a spray bottle? You can fill it with a very, very diluted dye solution and lightly spritz it on the areas that are paler. Probably best done on a warm sunny day, so Mr. Bear can dry outside. (I think minor variations won’t be that noticeable and give it the handcrafted look.)
That’s a good idea! My only idea to date was dipping the entire piece in a bucket of dye to re-tint. I may give yours a shot first. Awesome!
I learned that in a costume shop, as a way to make new things look old and distressed. RIT dye is addictive. You start looking at things, wondering how they would look in purple? Teal? Gray? Orange?
Will it take much to saturate? Or will it look spotty at all (like when I accidentally misted an uncut piece of the cotton with a bottle of cleaning bleach)?