Can this project be salvaged?

As some of my long-time readers might recall, in early November of 2011, after a more than year-long lobbying effort by my at-the-time 14-year-old son, we got a dog.

After attending a Halloween-themed adoption clinic sponsored by All Breed Animal Rescue of the Carolinas where we met and fell in love with a puppy named Clooney, we once again had a dog in the family.

To make Clooney feel welcome, I dove into my rather prodigious pile of unfinished projects, came up with some squares crocheted from felted merino roving, joined them into what I thought/hoped would be the perfect size blanket, and then felted it further for good measure.

Here is how it looked when I first finished it:

felted crochet pet mat
Clooney’s newly felted pet mat

and here is how it looked after a couple of weeks with Clooney:

Clooney's felted pet mat
Clooney’s felted pet mat

As a result of a plumbing incident last spring, it was decided that after the repairs were completed I could make the dining room over into my crochet empire headquarters. The transition is has moved forward one small step at a time, and this week I finally managed to clear off the top of the dining table.

Unfortunately, things under the table didn’t look quite as good:

under the dining table
My dining table-slash-desk

I decided that some felted coasters were in order to protect the new floor and Clooney’s former pet mat seemed a good place to start.

I cut out one of the squares and drew a circle using an indelible marker:

repurposing a felted crochet square
The transformation begins

and then cut out the circle, careful to remove any remnants of the line I had drawn with indelible ink.

Then I did it all over again with another color.

Next, I got out the assortment of yarns that I used to make the original project and tarted up the surface of both circles with a simple running stitch in a different color:

felted table leg coasters
I finish decorating the parts of the felted table leg coaster-to-be

Then, with wrong sides together, I ran a running stitch around the edge with a yellow yarn that I thought coordinated nicely with both sides of the coaster-to-be:

crochet furniture coaster
One side of the coaster-to-be
crochet furniture coaster
The other side of the coaster-to-be

Tomorrow, after I have gotten my son off to school and walked the dog, I will try my hand at re-felting this table leg-coaster-to-be, and if all goes well, I will be able to salvage the former pet mat and have my crochet empire headquarters one step closer to ready.

One thought on “Can this project be salvaged?

  1. Hi Leslie,

    Good idea to re-use Clooney’s pet mat.
    I like re-using, but I really like the result, the coasters. They look so cute. Great project!
    Bye, Estella

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