The Background Wool

Julia, my northern neighbor in Canada, asked me how I did the background on the Birthday Lion.  Actually, Julia, I didn't do anything special; it was mostly the different wool chosen that did the work.  I prefer to use more than one color wool in my backgrounds and borders.

As you can see there is a difference in color between the border and the inside around the lion.  I wanted a difference and have a big bag of primitive black wool for backgrounds which has a mixture of all dark wool.  So those strips from any dark textured wool adds to my primitive black background source.

The inside background is a combination of the three wool pieces you see above the rug.  From the left is Gemstone, then Whales Tail, and on the right a wool I've forgotten the name of but all three come from Heavens to Betsy.

The only other thing I did was hook areas in puzzle pieces where I could.  on the far right and between the lion's legs there wasn't much room to hook in blocks.  

So now the binding begins tonight and have resigned myself to the fact it needs to be done before starting anything else.  I've 3 days to completely finish the last two rugs within the confines of 2017.

Hope everyone is warm.

Saundra