I’m sure ya’ll noticed that I haven’t been posting the last few weeks. Unfortunately, I’ve been very sick with some kind of horrible flu – and also most of my current projects have been tending toward the long and onerous instead of quick and easy. But, I’m getting back on the horse this week with a newly finished project!
More than a year ago I got the idea in my head to recreate furniture items from Final Fantasy XIV. One of my favorite furniture items is the Goobbue Rug, so of course that was the first thing I wanted to craft. I started by looking at various tutorials on rug making, and settled on using canvas and pre-cut rug yarn. I also wanted to make sure that the rug wouldn’t slip and slide on the floor, so I also picked up some paint-on rubber rug backing called Saf-T-Bak.
Once all my supplies came in, it was time to get started. I drew design out onto the canvas – a rough guide that I would have to adjust as I went along. I centered my design on a blue indicator line in the center of the canvas to make it easier to maintain symmetry. Once my design was in place, I started hooking each individual piece of yarn into place starting from the bottom.
It took forever to finish hooking all of the yarn into pieces. I actually ended up having to re-do it because of a mistake I made cutting the design out from the canvas. I changed to a rectangular design, when I’d originally planned to cut around the shape of the goobbue itself. It was just too difficult to work with such an irregular shape when it came to finishing.
After getting all the yarn in place, I folded the edge of the canvas down and sewed it into place with lace weight white crochet thread. Once the canvas was sewn down, I crocheted around the edge of the rug with a marbled green yarn. I didn’t want to just leave it with a bare cavnas edge, after all.
The last touch I added to the rug were the eyes – large buttons sewn in place with purple embroidery thread.
Once the rug was complete, I painted the back of it with a couple layers of rubber saf-t-bak. I’ve never used something like this before, but it seems to work really well.
The rug is probably not great for every day use, but better as a decorative. The yarn pills quite a bit when you spend a lot of time touching or rubbing it. As of right now, the rug is sitting in front of the TV as a place for the cat to relax. She’s been laying all over it as I was working on it, so I figured if she liked it that much then I might as well let her at it.
