GIVEAWAY TIME! - Pumpkin Penny Rug Tablerunner

Ok, today is the official start of my very first blog giveaway. And it's a good one indeed!

Welcome to all! Lurkers, Ebay customers, and fellow bloggers are all appreciated here.

This giveaway is open to anyone who happens to stop in to read, but especially for all of you who are on my bloglist as followers because you have kept me entertained for the past 4 1/2 months since I've started my blog. You've taken me in, welcomed me and encouraged me with my work and I've very much appreciated that support....and your business!

I've said it before and I'll say it again; This is absolutely my favorite penny rug to make.

I've made hundreds of different penny rugs over the years, so it really is quite a compliment to the designer. (Click on the pictures to see all the detailed sewing on this tablerunner)

For me, since I design my own patterns, it's fun to take a break from being in penny rug designing mode and just make a penny rug from the instructions in front of me ...designed by someone else. This design always challenges me because of it's difficulty but then rewards me when it's finished because of it's beauty. So this is the penny rug that I will be giving away. It measures 12" x 28 1/2". All but the black wool background is my own hand-dyed or overdyed wool. The backing is a nice homespun cotton in a plaid that blends nicely with the colors of the wool. I've attached my owned signed and dated label on the back too.

It looks beautiful on a table, but my own rug is kept on the back of our old rocking chair so don't think of it just as something for a table.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR ENTERING

Chances for this will be based on a point system.

Each point accumulated will garner 1 entry.

Drawing will be done on Wednesday, August 5th

All you have to do is leave a comment in this post to receive ONE point.

Here's how to gather additional points:

* 2 Points --all of you 50 people who are listed right now (July. 31)as "followers" on my bloglist.

* 2 Points --all of you who are Ebay customers and have purchased items from me in the past.

* 1 Point -- all of you who add me to their "followers" list. (starting today, July 31)

* 1 Point -- all of you who have me listed on their blog page as a "favorite blogs to watch list"

* 1 Point -- all of you who announce my giveaway in their blog posts.

Tally up your points and let me know your total in the comment section.

If you don't have a blog, please be sure to list your contact email address in the comments.

And to give proper credit to the designer, here is her pattern. If anyone wishes to purchase this pattern to make it yourself, just do a google search or visit your local quilt shop to order it. My local embroidery shop has one pattern available for purchase. If interested, let me know and I can purchase it for you for $8 including shipping.

In other news, I have this Traditional Penny Rug listed on Ebay .....

As well as this popular Wool Blueberry Pinkeep listed. Please take a click over to visit my Ebay listings. It's a slooooow month for wool items so your business is much appreciated!

Happy Day everyone ... and good luck!

Deadline for entering is 2pm est, Wednesday, Aug 5th.

Winner will be announced Wednesday evening

Vintage Thursday! Guessing Game!

Can anyone guess what these old wooden things are?? Don't know?
I'll give you some hints .......

They come in a lot of different sizes. This large one is about 2ft high and almost as wide.

The way they are sitting is not the position they were used. Their functioning position would be laying on their sides.

They were used on transportation vehicles.

Still no guesses?

This little one shows steel bands around it and it also show how the slots were used. See the two pieces of wood sticking out on either side? They used to be a lot longer, but have broken off. When this was used, all the open slots would have had pieces of wood sticking in them.
Ok, I'm just going to tell you what this is. . . .

They are old wagon wheel hubs. You know back in the horse and wagon days ... the wagons had wooden wheels with spokes? These hubs were in the center of the wagon wheel and were used to hold the spokes and rims of the wheels.
Go take a look HERE to see what it looks like all put together as a wagon wheel.

The story behind why I have old wagon wheel hubs by my front door?

My husband's Uncle Lou was a bit of an eccentric man. The life of this man is a whole book in itself, but briefly told, he was a collector.
Gosh, .... the man collected really odd things. Hmmm ... I don't want to be disrespectful so I have to word this carefully ....
He owned several houses in that small town ... all of them vacant and all of them held his collected items ... literally from floor to ceiling, in every room, on every floor, from basement to attic with just a narrow pathway through each room.

At some point, when my husband and his brother were in their early teens, Uncle Lou found out about an old wagon wheel company that was going out of business.
Uncle Lou bought the contents of the wagon wheel company which consisted of HUNDREDS of old, used wagon wheel parts. We don't know why he did this.
My husband and his brother were used as free labor by my uncle to unload the truck full of heavy wagon wheel parts and store them in one of Uncle Lou's vacant homes.

There they sat until Uncle Lou passed away some 25 years later.

Now, since Uncle Lou never married, my mother-in-law was left with the entire mess of his estate and what the heck to do with hundreds of wagon wheels, old oak spokes and rusted rims.
Floor to ceiling wagon wheel hubs! My husband used to groan when even thinking about those hubs because that was some major unpaid labor he did to unload them so he didn't really want anything more to do with them other than light a match to the entire vacant home and happily watch it burn to the ground.

Well, ... let's just say .... hmmm... have to be respectful here again. My mother-in-law was a collector. ....
She wasn't about to let these old wagon wheel hubs and spokes go up in smoke via bonfire.
She did some research ... this was back before the internet too ... and found a small company that still made wagon wheels. She gave everything to him .... Yes, that's right, she gave them away to the first person who was willing to haul those hundreds of heavy, dirty wooden hubs away and out of our life.

Even though we thought they were all gone....the hubs would still appear in different places over time....haunting us. When we were dealing with my mother-in-law's estate 10 years ago, we came across even more down in her basement.

So the ones that I have here in my own yard are some of the few that were left over. Do I wish that I had kept more and sold them for their antique value?
NO .... wait .... I need to clairfy my answer .... NO, I DON'T WANT TO DEAL WITH ANYMORE HUBS EVER AGAIN! :)

This is why I have old antique wagon wheel hubs sitting at the front of my house. They don't haunt us anymore because instead of hiding them away in a dark musty basement, I use them outside to hold my flowerpots and for the memories and lessons that we've learnd from them.

One very important lesson that was learned was; Vacant houses should be rented or sold and not used for floor to ceiling storage.

Vintage Thingies Thursdays is hosted by Suzanne. Go take a click over to Coloradolady's blog to find more Vintage Thingies.

NOTE: I've finished the Pumpkin Penny Rug and will be announcing details for its giveaway tomorrow.
YES! I will be giving this away!

Here's the finished penny rug that I will be giving away. Again, the lighting is bad on this because it's a rainy dreary day. I had to take this to my kitchen table to get decent natural light. The orange pumpkin colors are really a lot darker than shown.
Oh and sorry, but that big can of Nacho Cheese that is shown in the picture will NOT be included with the giveaway. Sorry.

Be sure to check back tomorrow so that you can enter for a chance to win this wonderful penny rug. If you add me as a follower, I'll give you an extra entry chance, but that offer will close at midnight tonight.

It's almost Giveaway time!

Sheesh, I don't want to seem like I'm taunting everyone with a giveaway, cause that's not my intent. I just wanted to show that I haven't forgotten and I'm definitely progressing on it.

What's up with the green colors in this picture??? It doesn't look like this, really. The greens are much nicer. My camera is pms'ing today. It's best to not mess with it too much when it's in this kind of mood because not matter what I do, it just won't cooperate and take good pictures today. But anyway, this is the giveaway pumpkin penny rug that is almost complete. I still have to attach the tongues and then sew on the backing and I'll be finished. It should be ready for the giveaway on Friday, so make sure to watch for it.
So, it's taken an email from my sister, NAGGING me to post an entry in my blog. Yes, she's a nag and apparently nagging works because alas!, here I am!
I've been busy, ok? I've been babysitting in the afternoons, and the grandson is way too much fun to play with so my sewing gets put aside, for the most part. Also, my Rachel has gone back to school, so last week was spent shopping and getting ready for her departure. She left on Sunday and the house just isn't the same.... mostly because she left her IKEA tables in the living room for me to put away for her. Grr... Rach, these tables will not sit in there until you come back to get them in 3 weeks.
Anyway, I miss that girl already, yes I do. She went back to school to work a couple volleyball camps, which is a paid job. That's for 10 days. Then she'll come home for 3days to pack and go back for her pre-season volleyball training. She'll be living in the dorms during that time but only takes basic survivor items, because she'll be playing volleyball from 8am to 8pm every single day. After pre-season, she'll move her things to the apartment where she'll be living for the rest of the semesters. So it's a huge mess of packing and figuring what she's going to need to take.
I do none of the packing or figuring though ... my only duty is to have my credit card ready.
It's easy to blame my week of silence on babysitting and Rachel leaving but I might as well confess right now what the real reason is for my absence....
BIG BROTHER is on. Ok, I'm not proud of the fact that I watch Big Brother and become addicted to it each and every summer. I know that I lose braincells after watching it but I just can't help myself. Yes, I get the livefeeds so that I can watch them 24/7 . Ok? Yes, I agree it's utter stupidity. But I still watch. The livefeeds show me things that the CBS censored and edited show doesn't show. $14.99 for one month of livefeeds. Then I'll call to cancel and customer service will offer me another free month just to keep me as a customer, so I'll get basically the entire Big Brother season for less than half price.
I still have been sewing though. I finished up the traditional penny rug but this picture of it is utterly horrible. Remember, my camera has pms today so just imagine it as a nice blend of oatmeal browns

I made a couple more of the Black-eyed Susan candle mats. The black one was ordered and the light one will be Ebayed sometime soon. I really don't know which one I like better. They both turned out so nice. I like showing how to make the same pattern look different, so this is a good example.

That's all I've got! I'm outta here and off to clean up around the house a bit before the grandson comes over.

Happy Day everyone!

Traditional Penny Rugs

Back in those colonial days, women used scraps of wool clothing to create penny rugs. They're called penny rugs because coins, such as pennies, were used for the circle templates. Hundreds of circles were cut and sewn together to form the penny rug.
Here's one of my own traditional penny rugs. This is just a small size with the bottom "penny" measuring only about 1 1/2" wide. I like this size because they fit just about anywhere. There's no backing on this mat ... each individual penny is attached to the ones next to it which makes it drape nicely. It looks nice laying on a shelf with a few rows of the pennies hanging over the edge

This particular penny rug is on an old wooden trough. See how nicely it drapes over? And the smaller size makes it perfect for for that type of smaller space.

And by the way, shown in the picture are the hand-cast paper ornaments that I won from
La Chambre Rose . Thank you again, Nancy. Nancy has lovely items and a great blog so go visit!

So I'm in the mood to make another traditional penny rug. Here's another one of my own penny rugs, using off-whites. It's one of my favorites so I think I'll make one similiar to this one. I just don't feel like dying wool though, so I went through my wool stash and found some wonderful oatmeal colors that blend nicely and won't require any additional overdyes.

There are 36 circles that make up this design with each circle requiring 4 layers of pennies.

Sooooooo ... using my friend, the Walmart circle template, I drew out the three sizes of circles that I needed. The bottom circles require two layers of the same size so I've drawn out a total of 144 circles. I have lots of cutting ahead of me!

Now, some people have diecutters to do this job, making it quick and easy.

I don't have a diecutter and .... hmmm.... I really should buy one. I really don't mind cutting all those circles though and cutting them all by hand gives it a more handmade look. That's what I say to justify not spending the $$ on a diecutter.

So here's the three colors of wool that I'll be using. I like using textures in the pennies so I found two different shades of herringbone and one plain. Just like the colonial days, the pennies will be made from recycled wools. The herringbones have come from sportscoats and that nice light brown is from a wool skirt. I've washed them several times so that they've felted thick and soft.

This is all 100% wool. I guess woolfelt could be used but you're not going to get the same look or the same textures using woolfelt. If you're going to take the time to make this, I highly recommend using 100% wool over a 20%- 35% wool/rayon blend felt.. Today, when I go over to babysit this afternoon, I'll take these circles with me and cut them all out while the kid is taking his nap.

I've made up three pennies already just to see how they'll look together and to make sure the thread will work well with the colors.All four layers are sewn for each penny and this picture shows them attached to each other to form the beginnings of the first row. (I start with the center row first and work out to the ends.)

I try to make it neat on the back so that the attaching stitches don't show. I've run the stitches between the layers, back and forth a few times to attach the pennies to each other. The only thing that shows are the little knots where I've tied the threads off.

After I get one row finished, I'll take this upstairs to my ironing board and steam the pennies so that they lay really nice and flat.

I'm particular about the thread too. Embroidery floss is a LOT cheaper to use, but I prefer to use pearle cotton #8. The pearl cotton thread is twisted tight so it's going to hold up much better over time than the floss, which isn't twisted tight.
I'm thinking heirlooms here, I don't want to skimp on threads just because they are cheaper.

Over the weekend, I was able to progress quite a bit on the giveaway Pumpkin penny rug. I'm finishing up the embelllishments and starting to sew the tongues together. I'm on schedule for the giveaway to start next week, so make sure to check back then.

Happy Day everyone!

Update on the Penny Rug Giveaway

I haven't forgotten about the giveaway
This is what I'm planning to giveaway, hopefully by the end of July. I'm trying to work on it a little bit every day and as you can see, it's progressing nicely.
I still have the pumpkin stems to sew on and after that it's all embroidery embellishments with veins on the leaves, detailing on the pumpkins and then curly tendrils. Then I'll sew the 3 layers of tongues, stitch them on and finally sew on the homespun cotton backing.
Jimmy finished up the fence for me. I'm so happy with how it looks. Rach isn't so happy with it, saying that when she looks out the dining room window, it looks like we're in jail. She's silly.
She's leaving to go back to school next week, so it will only be another week in prison.
Today, I'm planning to extend the planting area to the end of the fence and then put stones under the fence itself to help with weed maintenance.
I went to an estate sale yesterday and found this cute little tin of vintage buttons. The lady only wanted 50 cents for the tin and an old pincushion.
K was visiting yesterday afternoon and as soon as I walked in the house, he saw the tin and said "ohhh, what's that?" BUTTONS! The boy loves buttons. He happily played with them for quite some time on the table, stacking and sorting them and admiring their colors and sizes.
He's such a cutie. Forget about expensive toys, give him an old tin of buttons and he's happy!
Happy Day everyone! It's Saturday and it's a beautiful day!