$10 Dress and the Beginnings of my Latch Hook Rug!

 So this is another find from the other day at Sears - this dress! A whole $10 way on sale. The colors are some of my favorites. I am actually wearing black jeggings underneath yet again. This is something I wouldn't normally recommend aesthetically, however like I mentioned in my last post, my toe won't let me as circulation gets cut off very easily for me with tights. Bizarre, but what are you going to do?

I'm attempting to show off my favorite mushroom necklace here... clearly not working.

But this worked! I don't know why my grandmother ever had this necklace. By the 70s when this whole thing was popular, she was in her mid to late 30s, possibly early 40s. Hip grandma? My mom was just graduating high school in 1975.

 

Orange and black can sometimes look a little Halloween-ish but I think this orange isn't so bad because it's not that bright. I tend to wear much brighter colors in the winter due to lack of sunlight here in Chicago. I'm pretty sure it rivals Seattle/Portland areas with lack of sunlight, but just a smidgen better. 

Today is sunny-ish which is why the photos are slightly over-exposed on my manual setting but... oh well. They looked fine in the camera, of course. 

And here is the moment you've all been waiting for (or not) - my latch hook rug! 

The canvas arrived yesterday to my surprise, so I immediately got to work on it. 

I actually laid it out on a rug I had upstairs in my sewing room because that size is the perfect size. I ordered 2 yards of canvas from Everythinglatchhook.com. 

This is what the awesome rug from upstairs looks like. I actually bought it Target about 9 years ago when I was moving away to college. It was part of their "dorm room" series and was on sale for only $10! That's an insane bargain for an area rug. I don't know why no one wanted them but I wish I had bought more than one. 

 So after laying out the canvas, I trimmed the edges leaving 1 inch around the border for binding after completion. I have seen some people bind the rug first - I think it's just a matter of preference. Then, with my computer up with my sketch on the screen of my design, I hand-drew the lines as close as I could to my original design. I used an old marker with almost a paint-brush like end, but I'm sure a Sharpie would work too.

 Next, I dragged the canvas to the sewing room so I could paint on the canvas my color template. (The cats would have gone nuts, ruined my colorwork so I locked myself in the room!)

I used old acrylic paint I had to paint it. I didn't paint the entire canvas 1.) because I didn't have that much paint and 2.) Because that would take way too long and is completely unnecessary. If you had a much smaller project then sure. Paint away! But I really didn't want to paint 15 sq. feet of a rug.

And this morning, my yarn arrived!! It was completely unexpected because I had called Herrschner's on Monday because dummy me entered a wrong email address while ordering and they told me it was expected to ship out within 7-10 days. I told the woman this was fine by me since I didn't expect to complete this until January 2014! Haha. 

Pretty sure she thought I was nuts. 

I ordered 6 packages each of lime green, sea green, and straw yellow. I definitely don't think it's going to be enough for the whole rug but it's a start! The yarn packages were on sale for about 80 cents each. I thought the rolls would be larger (as the rolls in my latch hook kit for a Christmas tree skirt are larger) but I suppose times have changed - haha. This yarn is 100% acrylic.

Note: I'm way off of my original estimate of $30-$40 for the rug - total cost will probably add up to about $150, but broken in small chunks over the year it will all work out.

The cats are already messing with the rug, so we'll see how this goes. Wish me luck! I'll be doing updates here and there about this thing but seriously - don't expect it completed until January 2014! 

There will be many fashion design projects in between.