The NEBA Roast Beef – Mike’s Submarines Latch Hook Project, October 14 2022 progress

One stitch left.

One final pull of dark cornflower yarn into this massive rug.

Background.

Earlier this year, I had planned to produce a latch hook rug of one of my photographs, my shot of the Quechee Covered Bridge in Vermont. The problem was, however … I started the project and hooked in the wrong part of the canvas, essentially putting in thousands of strands before I realized my mistake – essentially ruining the project.

Undeterred, I went with a different project, with the hopes of finishing it in time for maybe Competition Season 2022, or Historic Albany Foundation’s BUILT charitable auction.

Then I ran into bigger hurdles. The supplier for my latch hook rug yarn, Herrschner’s, has two shipping speeds – slow and slower. And if I run out of a specific yarn color, I’m looking at a 10-day turnaround to get new strands.

And trust me … I was down to my last bag of dark cornflower.

13 years of blogging and I’ve officially now used the phrase “I was down to my last bag of dark cornflower.” Sounds like the second paragraph to a book whose opening words are “It was a dark and stormy night.”

But here’s the final pull of yarn.

See that little strand of dark cornflower? Yeah, that one inbetween the pulls of dark teal and dark royal blue.

And with that pull, the front of the latch hook rug is complete.

Look at that. Ain’t she a beauty?

Now you’re probably wondering what that white fabric is in the lower right corner. That’s rug backing. I have to sew that around all four sides of the rug. This makes the rug edges look neat and tidy, and makes the rug look more finished.

I also have to paint the back of the rug with more rubberized yarn fix compound, so that none of the threads will fall out or get snarled.

It’s funny. I finished this rug TWO DAYS after I received acceptance from Historic Albany Foundation that my three submitted artworks for BUILT were accepted.

Well … it doesn’t matter how long it took. It’s done. At least the front of it is complete.

All it takes now is some backing compound and some binding, and this rug will reach completion.

And I’m VERY good with that.