Nature’s View Rug Hooking Footstool Pattern

This pattern idea came to me when I was finishing a footstool. That footstool, Annie’s Flower Power, shown here, has a hit and miss border that completely and beautifully disguises the corner seam. What other patterns would do that? Something with a vertical element. Hmmm…. Then I thought of trees.

After you sew up the side seams of a footstool, you hook to fill the empty area. The tree trunks on this pattern are only partially hooked when the pattern is flat. The main part of the trunk emerges only after the pattern is sewn together.

Because it may be hard to visualize this pattern, I wanted to show it to you in 3D. I searched for a way to digitally bend my image. I’m sure there is a way, but in the spirit of Simplify (see the stair riser pattern), I decided to print it out, fold it, tape it and then take a photograph.

Bobby, thank you for the simple solution.

The colors I used are strong but help to separate the areas visually. I image the ground hooked in textures that are only subtly different, the sky hooked using my special sky wool. . . More ideas below.

Here is a really rough approximation of what this pattern would look like hooked:

Use these ideas to make the pattern your own:

• Use my sky wool for the sky area or ignore the lines and hook the four areas solid.
• Treat each corner as a season, spring, summer, fall and winter. I diagrammed out some colors you could use. Please don’t try to match these in any way, I just grabbed whatever color came close to what I was thinking. These are NOT the exact colors I would choose in wool.
• On each side hook fields of different flowers growing. Roses in the summer, bulbs in the spring, mums for fall and bare stalks for winter?
• Different geographic areas on each side, mountains, ocean, etc.
• Add houses to each side. I actually have a draft for this idea so keep an eye out for it. That pattern will be more primitive and not as stylized.
• Add people to the sides of the ground on each side.
  • What your family does in each season.
  • Different decades of your life
  • Different generations. Make it a genealogy footstool!
  • People playing different sports.
  • A side for each person in your family, or each child if you conveniently have four children.
  • Use the season idea or drop it completely when you are adding other elements. Choose your favorite season. Make all the trees in fall colors, etc.
• Repeat the colors used in the trees and ground to create a small quilt block on the top. This helps to break up the sky area and bring color to the top.
• Ignore the quilt block idea and hook the top as all sky. Keep the quilt block idea to give direction to your hooking, but keep it subtle in different shades of blue.
• Ignore the sky idea completely and make the entire sky area a quilt block, all the way down to the ground. Add all those colors you love.

How would you make it your own? I’d love to hear your ideas!