Locker Hooking: An American Perspective. Author: Marilyn Livingston Locker hooking is a simple technique requiring no special skills, using a hooked needle and rug canvas to make durable rugs, wall-hangings, bags, jackets and other items. The process involves hooking loops of fiber fleece or roving through the squares of the rug canvas and "locking" them into place with a strong yarn. You will also need a yarn or twine to pull through your stitches. I used bakers twine for the Spring colors mat and burgundy Super Saver yarn for the log cabin block.
It also has enough grip to easily tie into a knot, which is great when you need to add another piece of yarn in the middle of a piece. It took so much longer! I used a black sharpie to help me keep track of my log cabin locker hook block and it made it x easier to know when to stop and switch colors. You can get your fabric ready before you start or tear pieces as you go. I usually end up somewhere in the middle preparing a few pieces and then hooking then prepping again.
Light weight quilters cotton is perfect for locker hook. For the longest pieces use the full width of the fabric, the way you would buy it off the bolt at the fabric store, not a fat quarter or pre-cut package.
Use your scissors to cut a small notch across the selvage and then use your hands to rip the fabric. Use your hands to pull off any loose strings, there will be a lot of them. If you find the fabric keep unraveling as you pull off the strings you can cut the selvage end off completely.
Slide one end though the slit in the other. Make sure the face side of both fabrics is facing up. Take the loose end of the fabric you pushed though the first piece and push it through the slit in itself.
In this example I put the green through the red, then the green through the green. Pull the two pieces of fabric apart and they will form a small knot. I like to hold the fabric folded in half right side out when I tighten up the knots because I think it makes it easier to work with. This is where that optional tapestry needle comes in. You can skip the needle and use the locker hook but it will take longer.
Start by deciding how big you want your finished piece to be, then add 2 or three rows to each side. Fold over that extra space and finger press it to stay in place. Thread the locker hook or tapestry needle with a fabric strip and whip stitch around working in the second space from the edge. If you want a thicker border you an go into the 3rd space from the edge instead of the second.
The spring colors mat had a 3 space border and the other two have a 2 space border. It will soak clean. Wash and rinse the fleece in water of the same temperature. A metal pet comb can be used to separate the wool fibers, creating a light, fluffy mass and removing any leftover dirt or vegetable matter that may have remained in the fleece.
Metal combs can be purchased at pet shops, department stores, or grocery outlets. If you can get them, hand cards are useful to straighten the fibers, but they can be quite difficult for a novice to use. A few U. They'll return it as wool batts large pieces of wool suitable for quilts or roving, which is available in craft and yarn outlets. Australian locker hooking is best suited to simple patterns.
If you decide to follow a design, just draw it on the rug canvas with a permanent fiber-tip pen or acrylic paint. If your project is a pillow or any other article having seams, be sure to leave three or four rows of canvas for your seam allowance.
In the case of rugs or wall hangings that require finished borders, you'll want to fold back two or three rows on the edge to make a selvage. I like to clip out the corners with scissors rather than try to hook through four thicknesses of canvas Fig.
I sew the folded row in place using the zigzag stitch on my sewing machine. It's easiest to begin hooking in the third row from the edge. Thread the needle eye of the hook with approximately three feet of locker yarn, and take a piece of wool that's been stretched to about the width of your index finger and tapered at both ends. The wool can be shaped by grasping a clump in both hands and gently but firmly pulling until it reaches the size you need: thick enough to fill the holes in the canvas, but thin enough to pull through easily.
If you're right-handed, you'll work from right to left. First, weave the threaded locker hook in and out of the canvas to anchor the end of the strand in place when you get more familiar with the technique, you can generally just let it hang loose. Then hold the canvas in front of you, with the hem on the underside, and draw your hook from the bottom to the top through the second hole, leaving several inches of locker yarn hanging loose on top.
Now, holding the lock of wool in your left hand underneath the canvas, run your hook down through the next hole. Lay the strand of wool over the hook, at a point about one inch from the tapered end. Fold that short end under the hook and back into the main strand of wool, making a loop on the hook. Draw this loop up through the hole and leave it in place on the hook shaft while you pass the hook down through the next hole, catch another loop of wool, and draw it up through the hole.
In a sense, you're crocheting through the holes of the canvas. Continue in this way until you have three or four loops — or however many you feel comfortable with — on the hook. Then draw the hook and the locker yarn through all the loops, locking them in place on top of the canvas.
When you run out of wool, simply elongate another piece, tapering the ends as before, and overlap the ends of the old and new pieces so that the overlap is no thicker than the rest of the strand. The fibers will interlock, but catch up any ends so they don't show and there's no indication of a splice which could be a weak spot in the finished piece.
When you're about six inches from the end of your strand of locker yarn, pull it out of the hook eye and let it hang from the front of the canvas. Rethread the hook and begin hooking in the next hole as if you'd never run out of yarn; but when you pull the new locker yarn through the hoops, leave a six-inch tail hanging on top of the canvas.
This end, like the end of the old yarn, will be woven in later with the yarn needle. Corners and turns require a special technique if they're to be neat and secure. Here's how it works. When you come to the end of a row, run your hook all the way down through the next hole in line. Pull the locker yarn taut, but not tight, and decide which direction you want to hook in next. If you want to go at a right angle to your first row, move back one hole—to the one in which you last hooked—and bring the hook all the way up through that hole right next to the loop it already contains.
Then begin hooking to the left. This procedure should be followed whenever you turn a corner, and will create a clean right angle. If, on the other hand, you'd rather go back alongside your first row, bring the hook up through the next empty hole to the left. Give your piece a quarter turn to the right, and then begin hooking toward the left, beside the first row. Craftswoman Joan Rough — owner of Fox Hollow Fibres and author of Australian Locker Hooking: A New Approach to a Traditional Craft, which was the primary source for most of this information — explains it thus: "Always bring the hook up one square behind the one in which you'll hook the first loop of any row in a new direction.
0コメント