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A Labor
of Love… or how two women almost
bit off more than they
could chew
In August of 2006 I
received an E-mail similar to many others I’ve received
throughout the years. “I have a hooked rug that my
mother started many years ago. She recently died and I’m
looking for someone who might finish it. Do you know
anyone?” I’ve been repairing hooked rugs for over 30
years and have tackled many difficult repairs, but I’ve
never been presented with a project of this magnitude. I
opened the e-mail attachment and gaped at my computer
screen. A huge oval-shaped piece of burlap was draped
over the roof and hood of a large car and I could see a
lovely assortment of fine-shaded fruit in a circle with
lots of unhooked burlap that seemed ripped in places.
The sender explained that he didn’t have a place large
enough in the house to spread out the “rug” to take a
picture, so he threw it over his car, and hoped I could
see most of his mother’s rug.
Eunice Keyworth lived in
Glens Falls, New York, and during her retirement in the
early 1950’s, she learned to hook rugs. She found a
rug-hooking teacher in Hudson Falls, who taught her the
Pearl McGown techniques of shading and helped her create
many beautiful area rugs for her home. In 1954, Eunice
embarked on her greatest project, a 9x12 oval fruit rug
using her own dyed swatches. Her son, Richard, remembers
coming home from high school every afternoon and seeing
his mother happily hooking fruit. Unfortunately when
Eunice’s beloved teacher died several years later, she
packed up the rug and all the wool, and vowed to finish
the rug “some day…”
I wrote back to Richard
Keyworth that occasionally I finished rugs for people,
but this looked like a quite a job, requiring more time
than I had. He said his mother had lots of boxes of wool
and some rug hooking equipment that he would give me if
I looked at the rug. Always intrigued with the prospect
of new wool, I said, “OK” and scheduled a day in
September to meet at my shop in Montpelier.
On the appointed day he
arrived with a pick-up truck FULL of boxes and bags of
wool, several large frames, and 2 partially hooked rugs.
The first rug, a smaller 3x5 floral, looked like an easy
fix with several small holes and edge finishing. As he
unrolled the second one, though, I realized just what a
monumental job I was contemplating. This was a 9x12 oval
with fruit around the outer edge and lots of unfinished
background in the center and edges. Most of the fruit
and leaf design was hooked but the acres of
burlap-background were bare, fragile, and even ripped in
places. There seemed no way to cut down the rug to save
the hooked parts, which was a possibility we had
pondered. The whole thing had to be finished… or
scrapped!
As one who loves a
challenge, I accepted the project and immediately
brought in my three employees to create our ‘plan of
action’. The first thing we did was to clear a space in
the shop large enough to accommodate such a project.
Then we spent the next five weeks hand-stitching a new,
primitive-weave linen onto the backside of the rug. We
used two 4-yard lengths of linen that were sixty inches
wide and seamed them down the middle of the rug. Using a
variety of stitches we quilted the new backing on and
sewed around each piece of fruit and each burlap rip.
The next step was to sort through all the bags and boxes
of wool to see if we could find the right colors to
complete the fruit and leaves. While the stitchers and
sorters worked, I went to the dye pot to create three
shades of mottled cream-colored wool for the hooked
background. This was the perfect color to showcase the
fruit and to create an interesting, patterned design in
the center of the rug. By the time the rug was
completed, I dyed more than 18 yards of fabric.
At this point, I must
introduce one of my employees who I’ve fondly dubbed,
‘the hooking machine.’ Vicki Graves has worked with me
for about two years, but she’s been hooking for over 20
years. No job is too small and apparently, none too big
for her to cheerfully step forward and accept. Vicki
hooks, on the average, three to four hours a night so
the Florida Rug as she called it- (Mr. Keyworth is from
Florida) turned into her “winter project”. She took the
rug and several bags of wool home just before
Thanksgiving, 2006. I saw it again just after the New
Year and then around Easter. It was remarkable how much
she had hooked. She said the most difficult part was the
growing weight of the hooked parts. She started in the
middle and worked her way to the edges, mixing the
different shades of the background color. Sometime in
the spring, it became clear that she wouldn’t have
enough wool; so back to the dye pot I went.
Unfortunately, the color was a bit different and one
afternoon, she and I spent pulling out loops and
blending in the new color.
Richard e-mailed me again
in the early summer and wondered if we might have the
rug done by August so that he could pick it up when he
was in New England. I was sure we didn’t want to mail
the rug- it weighed a ton! So Vicki pushed to finish the
hooking and then we spent three days sewing on the
binding and steam pressing the whole rug so it would lie
flat. We finished with one day to spare! When Richard
and his wife arrived at my shop, the look on their faces
was worth all the effort. With a tear in his eye,
Richard said it brought back memories of happy times
with his mother. Vicki and I are glad we took on this
huge project because we learned an awful lot, but we
aren’t sure we’d take on another of this size… this
year, anyway. |
