A Little Locker Hooking

Greetings! This another craft I like to dabble in, called Locker Hooking. I love to learn new things, and when I had the chance to do a two-hour demonstration of this craft several years ago — learning it first by working the demo project — I was “hooked!”

Tools and supplies are cotton fabric, which you tear or cut into strips. Canvas mesh, either 3.75 squares per inch, or 5 squares per inch. Cotton locker hooking twine or cotton yarn. A Locker Hook — long crochet hook with an eye at the opposite end. Also scissors, a pen, a small ruler, some safety pins, and a yarn needle . All set!

Things about this craft that I love: FABRIC! Lots and lots of fabric!

Designing in color! Oh, and designing :)

Graph paper and grids. Be still my heart! A clean sheet of graph paper gives me a thrill! Locker hooking is worked from patterns similar to counted cross stitch — all graphs, all the time. But you can also just draw with fabric loops, making it up as you go. I love that, too!

Versatility. You make anything you want — book covers, wall hangings, jewelry, home accessories, and anything that needs a thick piece of cotton for insulation!

A finished piece of locker hooked mesh is about 1/4″ thick, and typically solid cotton. That makes a terrific hot pad. A hot pad that’s good to 500 degrees F. A hot pad that’s as big as you want to make it, in any color scheme you want to use, and requires nothing complicated.

That’s where this project comes in. When I visited daughter Becca in AZ last, I got her one of these stovetop espresso makers for a birthday present. (OK, yes, of course it was a self-indulgent present! I used it every day!) We quickly noticed that this little aluminum pot stayed very hot, and left metal marks on the countertop and the stove top (when cool.) That’s when I “cooked up” this little hot pad project.

No apologies for the bad puns… It’s a family thing :)

I designed this little mat for Becca’s espresso pot, with red to match her kitchen decor and brown to disguise the coffee drips. She helped pick out the fabric. I went for an octagonal pattern to echo the shape of the pot.

In this photo, you can see around the edges there is still some work to do. But all the loops are in — yay!

I meant to get this done while I was down there visiting — I had taken my locker hook and some mesh and yarn, planning to do a project while there. But we got kind of sidetracked with all this painting and then there were all the soccer games we attended, plus I was also embroidering and doing some Tunisian crochet (which you will hopefully see this week also!)

 

This project is now done and ready to go catch some coffee drips, protect some countertops, and clutter up her cute little apartment even more. But at least it is color coordinated!

And I got to play with fabric. It’s all good. What should I locker hook next? Oh, my French Press coffee pot needs a cozy :)

Gail