Magpie Cherry Pie Pattern

Magpie Cherry Pie, 16″ x 20″, #8-cut wool on linen. Designed and hooked by Karen Larsen, Elliottsburg, Pennsylvania, 2013.

BY KAREN LARSEN/CROW’S FOOT FARM DESIGNS PHOTOGRAPHY BY IIMPACT XPOSURES

When my granddaughter was a bit younger, she loved to color in coloring books. I would watch her color the various parts of the design: a blue cat, green sky, pink grass, and so on. Her objective was to fill in the blank spaces with color—any color. That got me thinking about rug hooking and how I fill in the “blank” areas of the pattern design. The wool I choose and the way I hook it can have a big impact on the finished look of my rug.

Of course, color planning is an important step in deciding the look of your rug, but just thinking of color is only part of the fun. Choosing textured or plaid wool adds interest and hints of other colors within the pattern element you’re hooking. It is also important to remember that design elements are three-dimensional objects. A round apple, a square house . . . we hook those elements according to their shape.

I decided to focus on how I use wool as I designed and hooked this simple and colorful wall hanging. Although Valentine hearts come to mind for February, I hooked a cherry pie in honor of the birthday of George Washington.  This design had several areas in which I could experiment with my choice of color, texture, and the direction of my hooking.

 

First I hooked the pie with the lattice piecrust. I used a medium gold/brown wool with a pale plaid for the bottom crust. I then used a pale tan textured wool for the lattice. I cooked some of that wool with two black tea bags to darken it so that the lattice hooked left to right is darker than the lattice hooked up and down. This coloring gave the look of the crust woven over and under itself. I found a perfect red chunky yarn for the cherry pie filling oozing out between the lattice crust. Since this is a wall hanging and won’t be walked on, using yarn is a fun and easy way to create more texture and interest.

The pie stand was hooked next using an off-white wool, which had been lightly marbleized with a hint of blue and brown. Again, using a wool with a bit of color added here and there gives the pie stand more dimension. Compare it with the plain off-white squares of the tablecloth. The white squares look very flat. The red squares were hooked with an overdyed red plaid wool. I wanted the tablecloth to be “flat,” but I did hook the white squares vertically and the red ones horizontally to separate them somewhat.

Most of my designs include a bird and this one is no exception. A black and white magpie sits atop the cherry pie with a few cherries dangling from his beak. A magpie’s black feathers are shiny and often have a blue hue, so I used navy wool for his feathers and hooked in a bit of medium blue for highlights.

I have recently been using black and white yarn to create the eyes of my birds. For this magpie, I used two strands of black yarn and two strands of white yarn. I pulled the four ends of the yarn up from the back of the linen and tied them into a knot on the top and then brought the four ends back down through the linen. This created a three-dimensional eye with a hint of white, which makes the eye stand out.

Then I hooked the purple background. In this area, I was just filling it in with color (like my granddaughter and her coloring books), but I still wanted to add interest and not make the area look flat. So I used two different, but quite similar, purple wools with small windowpane plaids. I cut all the strips and jumbled them in a bag and drew one out at a time randomly.

I started by outlining the bird, pie, and pie stand and worked out to the edge. This created a very organic, free-flowing feeling.

I decided to not use a border on this design, so I hooked a dark purple line to define the edges. After steam blocking the mat, I finished the edges by trimming the linen to 15/8″ all around. With the mat right side up, I folded the cut edge of the linen to just touch the purple hooked edge, then folded it in once more and whipped it with dark purple wool yarn. My wall hanging is completed and will add a bit of color for the winter months ahead.

MATERIALS

• 26″ x 30″ primitive linen foundation cloth
• Chunky red yarn for cherry pie filling
• Wool yarn for binding edge
• #8-cut wools, as below

Background

• 1/2 fat quarter each of two purple plaids

Bird

• 4″-wide strip of navy wool
• Small amount of off-white wool
• Medium blue noodles
• Black and white yarn for eyes

Pie Crust

• 3″-wide strip of medium gold/brown wool
• 1/2 fat quarter tan textured wool

Pie Stand

• 8″-wide strip of marbleized off-white wool

Tablecloth

• 2/3 fat quarter of off-white wool
• 2/3 fat quarter overdyed red plaid wool