Rosemary Morrison loves her craft. If you couldn’t tell by looking at her, you could see it in her boxes of craft supplies, or the bookshelves stacked floor to ceiling with a vivid collection of dyed wool and rug-hooking magazines.
“This is a craft house,” she explained recently.
On the table sat several patterns she uses to make her rug-hook art. She can explain the origin of each: One came from a friend, another came from a book she got when she went to rug-hooking camp at Cambria Pines. She adores the patterns because they inspire her, but she doesn’t always like to use them because of plagiarism issues.
“I still like to create my own, because, you know, that way I can do what I want with them because they are mine,” she said.
Rug hooking involves using a hook and dyed wool to create pictures and designs on a piece of fabric, such as burlap or linen, held by a frame. It can be embellished with yarn, beads, shells, or anything else that suits the artist’s fancy. The artist punches the hook into the fabric and pulls up successive loops of wool to create a picture, loop by loop.
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Hooking began around the mid 1850s, when women used any type of discarded material for the craft. Over time, the process grew more refined, and enthusiasts began creating patterns. The creations aren’t limited to rugs; artists can also make doormats, purses, wall hangings, and more.
Morrison has stacks of projects in various stages of completion. Some she expects will take a long time, others are finished favorites, and still others are awaiting that one little extra embellishment Morrison hasn’t decided on. She creates nearly everything, including such three-dimensional elements as rosettes, that goes into her pieces.
She also hand dyes the wool in her kitchen. She uses a color wheel to create the exact shade she needs, then dyes the material and cuts it into long strips to be hooked into the material.
Morrison, who also teaches a rug-hooking group, had experimented with several similar hobbies but fell in love with rug hooking.
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“I tried bunka and punch art, and when I hit this is was like—gasp!—it was my epiphany,” she said. “I don’t have to draw things, but I can put color in things, and for us that don’t know how to draw, it’s inspiring. You can really be creative.”
Grace Kalal is in Morrison’s rug-hooking group. As she recently concentrated on creating a purple lily, she thought about rug hooking’s appeal to her.
“I used to do tole painting, and this is just trying to do some color, but it’s just another medium for me,” she said.
The pictures and designs that can be created with rug hooking are limitless. Images go from simple design to ornate and intricate portraits using wool in slightly different colors to represent shading and depth. The process is a long one, however, even when it comes to creating a small piece.
Morrison said she’s created pieces that have taken up to a year, working on them a little every day. She said she’s even studied under teachers who have worked for several years on a project, like a room-sized rug.
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“There’s times when I’ll spend the weekend working on a piece. I’ll just put a book on tape on and just go to it,” she said, miming rug hooking at an exaggeratedly fast speed.
But for Morrison, there’s never any hurry, no matter what piece she’s working on. She likes the journey to the finished product.
“It’s the process more than the hurry up and get it done thing,” she said. “This is not a hurry up get it done thing; it’s about taking your time, it’s about the camaraderie.”
Arts Editor Shelly Cone is as snug as a bug in a rug. Contact her at scone@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Aug 25 – Sep 1, 2011.
