Gourd Art

Here's a darker version of the gourd chicken.

Here's a highly embellished paisley design.

Barn red and moss green on gold paisley

In April, we decorated gourds with paisley designs and made chickens and gourds out of them. It is quite a process to get the gourds ready to decorate. The dried gourds must be cleaned and sanded smooth. These were painted with a double base coat. When the designs are finished and the pieces dry, they need to be sprayed with a clear coat to preserve them. It was a fun project, and there were many different interpretations of the fowl.

You start with a dried, cleaned gourd like these in their natural form.

Here are all the gourds in their base coats drying in the sun.

The golden gourds looked pretty just as they were here.

Rag Rugs

You can either crochet or braid the rugs.

At our March meeting, Becky showed us how to make old-fashioned rag rugs out of strips of cloth. If you can find the selvage end of cloth on rolls, you can crochet it in a circle to make a rug. Back when all the textile mills were still here in the US, you could easily acquire these rolls. Now it is difficult to find them, and if you do, they are expensive. Or you can rip fabric into strips and sew them together to crochet or braid. Use a Q crochet hook which is a rather large one. If you choose to braid, you then coil the braids into a circle and whip stitch together. It is a good way to use old clothing or fabric to make a useful and decorative household item.

A rag rug made by Liz Wilson out of polyester