Felted-Wool Ball Trivet à la Oak Park Skylight

While we were staying with David's aunt and uncle in Wisconsin last month, she apologized one evening at dinner that the potatoes had gotten cold rather quickly, and asked another time that when we went to Taliesin in a few days, we look in the gift shop and see if they still have placemats to match the table runner she'd bought there years ago.  I took a photo of the runner so as to be able to double-check -- as it turned out, this particular runner is no longer available, but we had discussed and searched the internet for the pattern enough that it stuck in my mind long afterwards, and when we got home and pondered what we could send them as a thank-you, both the cold potatoes (which David and I suspected were due to setting down the dish on the cold granite counter with only a thin mat in between) and the Frank Lloyd Wright table runner pattern came together in my imagination, and I thought of making one of these felted-wool ball trivets.

These felted-wool balls are the 2.5 cm ones from The Rainbow Barn on Etsy, who easily and promptly supplied my request for the various quantities and colors I requested, which were roughly the same percentage as in the original runner. 

(I think that the runner is based on the Oak Park skylight ...)

I used the tutorial by Lauren at The Bluebonnet Farmhouse which was very clear and easy to follow.  I didn't get the balls smooshed together as snugly as I might have liked, but like so many ostensibly simple things, there is a knack to getting it just right, and keeping the tension snug when moving from one row to the next wasn't as easy as I expected.  (Hand-quilting knots worked only about forty percent of the time, but later, when running an extra length of thread around the edges "just in case," I found that small quilting knots were fairly successful not so much in tying off a thread but just for keeping the thread from slipping and loosening.)  What with that and using 2.5cm balls instead of the 2cm ones that Lauren used, my mat is bigger (about 9 inches/23 cm square) and more flexible than it might have been, but that is not necessarily a bad thing when going under a large serving dish at dinner -- and I'm very happy with the colors and the nod to my original inspiration!

Comments

[David]

I see cat toy potential as well ;-)