Last night I was digging through fabric and compiled this bunch to make into a rug.

After some cutting and crocheting, the Earth Tones rug:

You can see I left out the green and white striped fabric and the solid white fabric. I always seem to gather more fabric than actually goes into the rug and some doesn't make the final cut to be in the rug. Back in the bins for next time!

A new design! I'm calling this one Flower Trio Rug - really creative name, huh? Well, I'm much more creative with a crochet hook than with words.

Here's a close up of the flower:

I crocheted this rug with a new batch of mill ends I ordered. Last time I ordered the polyester/cotton mill ends, so this time I tried the poplin/corduroy mix of mill ends. I was pleased that they were all solid colors and rich dark colors for the most part. I wasn't pleased that they were so thick! I have to cut them all in half. Part of the point of the mill ends is that it cuts down on cutting time. Well, I'm proud to say that I recruited help to do the cutting of this batch of mill ends for me. I have been working so hard that my hands have been aching and I needed a break. Now that I have someone else doing the cutting work, I can spend more time dreaming up motifs to sew on top of my rugs! These blue flowers were crocheted from a thrift store t-shirt. Some ideas that are rolling around in my head for future rugs include turtles and lacy doilies.

Twin Flowers Crochet Rug

I've been seeing a lot of embroidery hoop artwork on Etsy lately and was inspired by it to try a similar technique with my rugs. Here is a plain minty green rug with two EKRA-designed black flowers hand-stitched to it. It is kind of boring to crochet the plain rug, but worth it once it is decorated.

A new customer from Hawaii contacted me a few days ago about a custom rug for her bathroom. She sent me the perfect inquiry about it - she knew the size she wanted, she told me which rugs in my shop she liked best, and she told me about the space and the decorations she wanted it to match. I sent her this picture with some fabric I had pulled together for her to see if I was on the right track with the colors.

She liked it so I moved ahead and made this.

She told me her house had a modern tone to it, not country or cute. I hope this rug fits the bill!

Sidenote: It always amazes me that I have all the fabric I need to make just about any custom rug. I always feel like my fabric stash is dwindling.

Interesting note about me: I apparently do not like cobalt blue at all. She wanted a mainly greenish-blue rug but wanted a little bit of black to match her floor and cobalt blue to match a piece of china she had. I only had one cobalt blue thing to work with - a t-shirt that Aaron didn't want anymore. It had been sitting in the laundry room for weeks waiting to be washed. I kept leaving it out of the wash because, meh, I just didn't need it. Finally, it is used. Which leads me to one more interesting thing..

Interesting note about this rug: Last January Aaron and I went to Florida and he bought two t-shirts at thrift stores. One green and one blue. Right after we got home, we started the iPhone diet and now both of those shirts are too big for him. Both of them ended up in this rug! Perhaps that wasn't as interesting to you as it is to me, but I love thinking about where the fabric has been before it is a rug and where it ends up.

Hopefully the customer will share a picture of the rug in her bathroom and we can all see how it looks!

Yesterday's Etsy article about the seller staroftheeast inspired me to get moving on improving the pictures in my etsy store. In the article, the daughter of the mother/daughter team said that one day she replaced the photos on 100 items. Man! That is dedication and hard work! As much as I wish my photos would just magically get better, the truth is they won't without practice and patience. Not two of my strongest qualities. I gave my store a good hard look and decided to focus on the rugs today. I took a bunch of new pictures and now, going back and uploading them, I can see that there is a huge improvement. The above photo is one I took this morning. I wanted to show the old picture, but I can't find it. My computer must have eaten it (or more likely, I forgot where I saved it and under what name.) This jolt of inspiration came at just the right time. I really pushed myself on Sunday night crocheting bowls to send away to stores and worked too hard. My hands hurt so bad yesterday! I tried not to crochet anything, but that just made me grumpy. Also, it was cloudy all day so the light was no good for taking photos. It led to a lot of pouting and stomping around. But today, the sun is shining, the sky is blue, and my hands don't hurt!

After a really quiet month in my etsy store, things have picked up in the last few days. I sold three rugs including my Chicago Flag rug and got a custom order for a bathroom rug that will live in Hawaii.

So, watch for better pictures in my etsy store. But since the sun is shining, I'm going to take a break and go work in the yard for a little while. I want to plant a patch of wildflowers and I need to clear the area first. So, watch out weeds, I'm coming to chop you down!

The Indie Craft Revolution this past weekend was great! It was held in the St. Louis Artist's Guild which is a really cool building with lots of rooms, textured ceilings, and a fireplace. In fact, my booth was right in front of the fireplace, which was neat backdrop for my booth. Here's a picture of the whole thing (I forgot the real camera, so this was just taken with my iPhone).

After I took the picture, I decided to switch the table with the rugs with the lower piles of rugs (laid out on tubs).

Here was my nemesis for the weekend.

What is that? It is the pilot light for the gas fireplace! Oh my gosh, that was so annoying. I'm the first to admit I'm a pretty clumsy and messy person. That little fire right behind me was driving me crazy! But, I'm proud to report that I was able to keep all my paper bags, credit card slips, fabric rugs and bowls, and myself out of the fire. Nothing at all was burned! When I saw that the first day, I thought for sure I was going to end up burning the whole place down.

Being at this show reminded me that I'm still a newbie down here. People kept asking me if I knew this place or that place, and most of them I didn't. It was a great weekend for finding out about stuff in St. Louis and meeting more artists and art supporters here. Despite the rainy weather, the show was really well attended. And despite that fact that there was no holiday shopping to do, I made a good amount of sales.

This show had a couple of firsts for me. It was the first time I didn't take any mosaic frames and it was awesome! I could be calm about kids bumping into the table because there was nothing breakable on it. Not having them there really brought my stress level down, I didn't have to worry about them breaking and it was great. The other first was "displaying" so many rugs. I put displaying in quotes because I didn't think they were displayed that well piled up on the tables and bins. But as I was telling people about them, I invited them to dig through to check them out and they did! In fact, I sold SIX rugs! I'm really happy about that since making rugs is how I started and really my true crafting love.

Now I'm busy filling the orders for stores that I was kind of ignoring until after this show. Besides that, I'm working on restocking and getting pumped for Renegade in Austin, TX!

Come see me and 75 other crafters and artists at the Indie Craft Revolution show this weekend in St. Louis at the St. Louis Artist's Guild. Hours: Saturday 10-6, Sunday 10-4

Bring supplies for the upcycle exchange and receive coupons you can use at the show including a 20% off one item at my booth!

Get all the info you need and more here.

Not sure what it is about the jellyfish, but they are so fun to make! From ages 10-21 I wanted to be a marine biologist because I loved the ocean and ocean life. I guess maybe that love is resurfacing in the form of some crocheted rugs.

Here's the beginning. Just a mill end, a crochet hook, and some time.

Many hours later, the base was crocheted, the yarn for the jellyfish was hand-cut from a white t-shirt, the jellyfish was crocheted, and finally the jellyfish was hand-sewn to the base - the most tedious part is this hand-sewing. And my hands seriously hurt when I was finally finished. But, I'm really happy with the result and feel confident that even this more artsy rug can stand up to regular rug useage and machine washing.

Also, check out the Craft: blog! Last week's jellyfish rug is featured on it today!

More fun with my mill ends! I was looking at them last night thinking, what am I going to do with that white? And that light blue? Hmmmm. Kind of looks like the colors of the Chicago flag. People who live in Chicago have a lot of city pride and there are a lot of crafters who use the flag imagery in their crafts. I don't live in Chicago, but have a lot of friends who do and always love to visit. Also, that flag has a color combination that I really love but haven't used much - light blue and red. The blue and white are mill ends. The red six pointed star was crocheted from a red thrift store fabric remnant - kind of like a jersey material - the kind with lots of little holes in it to keep you cool. Anyways, may I present

Chicago Flag Rug

If you are interested in seeing the real flag and reading about the symbolism of each of the parts, check out the Chicago Flag Wiki.

For those of you who know me well, you can probably guess which flag I'd like to tackle next. CANADA!

A brand new EKRA design! Jellyfish! So cute, but so labor intensive!

Besides the floaty jellyfish, the thing I love about this rug is that it had such humble beginnings. The base is a navy blue knit sheet. The jellyfish were crocheted from an old white t-shirt. Normally just kind of blah fabrics, but with a little work and imagination, a real wow of a rug!

I've had this idea for awhile, but was thinking if I stitched jellyfish that I crocheted with my regular fabric yarn, that they would be too thick and make the rug really uncomfortable to stand on. I tried crocheting some jellyfish with regular yarn, but I didn't think the yarn would stand up as well as fabric yarn. So, I decided to cut the t-shirt very thin and crocheted the jellyfish with that and they weren't as thick as if I used my regular fabric yarn.

Here's me working on hand-sewing the jellyfish onto the rug. Each individual tentacle securely attached to the rug. It took forever!

But look how cute they are!

And they make up a happy little family on this Jellyfish rug!