Emma's Garden

Here's a new design I hooked up for a workshop I'm teaching later this week in Mississippi. I named it "Emma's Garden", in honor of my lamb Emma (of course!). I hooked it up to be a sampler of various techniques and materials. The leaves all have antique paisley veins, the flower petals are prodded using various lengths and widths of wool strips, the seed part of the flowers have an accent line of beading, the little sheep is hooked with Corriedale roving, and curly sheep locks were worked around the lamb's face. Yes, those are some of Emma's real curls! The lamb's ear is also dimensional...it's a proddy strip that was trimmed in the shape of an ear, pulled up through the backing, then the two pieces were sewn together. Three different textured wools were hooked into the background and I echoed around all of the shapes to give a nice soft movement to the rug. The rich plaid in the border helps bring the colors of the rug out to the edge. I think it has a nice flow all the way around.
But of course, this pattern could be entirely hooked with wool strips without any special embellishments and it would be equally wonderful!