Wool Hooked Rugs

Inspiration leads to 'The Dance of Life'

Friday night, June 24, the annual Hudson Relay For Life will kick off. A part of the annual event and a popular fundraiser is the silent auction.

This year a group of seven women put their talents together to create a vibrant hooked rug called “The Dance of Life.” It will be one of the items included in the auction. The value of the piece would be well over $300 if purchased from an artist.

Connie Piekarski, who is walking with the team The Hupperts Hoppers, is hooked on creating hooked rugs. She shares her passion with Cyndee Lindgren and Pearl Gies (also a survivor) from Hudson. Joining them to create the Dance of Life are fellow rug enthusiasts Deb Johnson and Anne Knudeson, Stillwater, Sharon Smith, Minneapolis and Paulette Wenztlaff who owns River Rock Wool in East Farmington. Wentztlaff hand dyed some to the wool in this rug.

“The Dance of Life” was featured and honored in a national magazine as the reader’s choice first place original design. Piekarski thought the story behind the design would be fitting for the relay.

The design was created by Cecille Caswell, who at the time was both suffering with her own health issues and mourning the loss of her mother-in-law who was also her first hooking teacher. Caswell, from Alberta, Canada, has a passion for bright colors, funky and nontraditional designs. All are reflected in this fun, inspiring piece.

When Cyndee Lindgren was in Vancouver, B.C., one of her stops was at a wool shop. Lindgren inquired about Caswell and discovered the shop owner knew her and gave Lindgren her e-mail address.

Once Caswell discovered that the local rug hookers wanted to create and donate her rug to the Relay For Life, she donated the pattern to the cause.

The end result is a rug that speaks volumes about joy and inspiration through its color and vibrance.

Piekarski has walked at the relay for years. It was while her dad was suffering from cancer that she discovered the aid available through the American Cancer Society.

“Finally it felt like someone was on your side,” said Piekarski. “That is why I walk. They helped with so many things during that time.”

“The Dance of Life” seemed a fitting tribute to the Relay For Life.

Hooked Rugs. Some things to watch for.

Hooked rugs are a specialty craft found overseas and here in America.

If you’ve ever done a little bit of needlepoint or other embroidery, you can envision the craft of latch hooking a rug also. They all fall into the same “family” of construction type.

For a great video on the literal 1-2-3 of crafting a hooked rug, this is a great one:

Video on YouTube => Rug Hooking Process

Hooked rugs are fun. They can have whimsical designs:

These older hooked rugs from China do NOT have the latex on the back that many of the new hooked product (the larger sizes) do today. These are the really well made ones, the ones where you can SEE the loops on the back side instead of a material backing. The material tends to be hiding latex, which is an adhesive used to “hold” the loops in place when they are not woven in place tightly.

Every rug making country, and every rug construction type (woven, tufted/hooked, custom), has both low quality and high quality examples.

I’m often asked “what country has the best rugs?” And the answer is, they all do…

…and they also have the worst! LOL. You just need to know what you are looking for.

So in regards to specifically “hooked rugs” – I want to point out a few dangers to be on the lookout for so that you do not purchase a rug that may have problems the untrained eye may not see when purchasing as an investment… or to simply use and enjoy in your home.

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1) The FIBERS.

Unless you plan to use the rug as a doormat and will abuse it and so are looking for the cheapest quality rug possible (which you can find PLENTY at your local Home Improvement Box Store) – I tell people that they want to find a WOOL rug.

Why wool? Lots of reasons. It’s strong, comes in a wide variety of colors, has great texture, and not being “synthetic” is not made of petroleum by-products.

Here’s a post I did on all of the advantages of wool => Why Wool Rugs Rule!

Wool hooked rugs will tend to be woven on a cotton mesh foundation. Cotton is strong, and holds its shape well. There are also cotton-on-cotton hooked rug (cotton face fibers looped around a cotton foundation mesh), but one of the drawbacks of these are that cotton is VERY absorbent and will show soil faster than wool, so it looks ugly faster. So I prefer a wool hooked rug on a cotton foundation mesh.

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