“SNOW” Penny Rug –Tutorial (Part 2)

I’m going to finish this up today by creating the snowflakes.

The snowflake centers are cut out by using freezer paper also.  Even though they are small and you might think you can easily cut them by just drawing the lines, the freezer paper holds the wool tight so that each of those little tips and corners are cut perfectly.  Just be careful when removing the freezer paper so that it doesn’t shred the wool tips.

Ok, so in this picture, from the backside, I pinned the snowflake center.

Then I measured and drew the lines with a chalk pencil. (the measurements will be given in the pattern instructions.)

Following the drawn chalk line, I did a stem stitch all the way across, catching the snowflake center in with the stitching.

See how I’ve crisscrossed the stem stitch? 

I drew in the other lines and stem stitched. 

I have to note that I like how the stem stitch looks on the snowflake but if you’re not comfortable doing a stem stitch then a simple back stitch would work nicely too.  They are your snowflakes … create them how you wish! 

To give the snowflakes more detail, I’ve made little straight stitches and then added a little french knot on the top.

Here’s the finished snowflake.  I just need to do two more smaller ones underneath the “Snow” letters and I’ll be finished with the top.

Finished!  Now I’ll take this to the ironing board.  See how the background isn’t laying flat?  It’s a bit puckered so steaming it with an iron will take those puckers right out. 

For this design, I’m not going to let the iron touch the wool at all.  I’ll just hold the steaming iron over the design and let the steam do the work.  The background puckers go flat almost right away.

After it’s steamed, I can attach the backing.

I reused the same freezer paper from the background so that the shape will be exactly the same.  The pin that you see on the one scallop is there to indicate where my matching point is.

I’ll match up the front background and the backing scallop together and then I’ll pin the rest of the backing on.

It fits perfectly this way.  I am really generous with the pins so that no shifting occurs when I blanket stitch the edges.

All I need to do is flip it over and blanket stitch around the outside edge.

Here’s the almost finished front!  Unfortunately I can’t show this with the blanket stitching on the outside edges because I ran out of my pearle cotton thread.  I should get more in today so I will be able to show the completed rug tomorrow.

You can see, this isn’t very difficult to make.  I used extra thick coat weight wool for this one but regular weight wool looks really nice too.

If some of you were readers last year, I showed one made with regular weight wool …..

Here’s the one that I made last year using the regular weight wool.  It’s just as nice, just not as puffy.

I’ll be taking orders for the pattern tomorrow, so keep watch!

 

Happy day everyone