REPLICATING AN ANTIQUE RUG…

Yesterday Gwen was here – she had just recently finished her second rug and now is tackling a bigger piece.  I have an antique rug that is about 75 – 80 years old. We used this as the basis for the new rug design but changed a few things i.e. the house was changed so that it is more like the ancestral home, three dogs to represent Gwen’s 3 dogs and a few colour changes since as you can see the original antique rug has very little colour (well except for a bit of smoke!!! yellowing). I love this old rug – love the lack of perspective, the fact that the squirrel and the horse are almost the same size! the big black hmmm would it be a snow cloud in the sky or did the hooker just run out of fabric (no wool in this rug at all!!!).  It is a wonderful rug and I am happy to have it and cannot wait to see what Gwen does with her rug.

I mentioned earlier this week that this Saturday I have a show in Kingston.  Next weekend I also have our 3 day Westport Fall Colours Studio Tour.  I cannot believe next weekend is already Thanksgiving weekend.  We have a wonderful tour in Westport and our stop has 8 artists this year.  Our website shows all the artists on the tour and pictures of their work www.artatwork.ca/westport_studiotours. I am so pleased and fortunate to have my guest artists.  This year we will miss Donna and Debbie – our carver and potter.  Hopefully they will be back next year but I think our new line up will please everyone.

Well off to dye dirty snow for Gwen’s rug.  I hate using just white so I spotdye different whites with a very light light formula of Cushings silver grey and a very light light formula of seal brown – into the microwave for 10 minutes and voila – dirty snow! It has shadows and dirty spots without having to hook in other colours.