Tamara Pavich

This book combines three of my passions: a love of the written word, the joy of making rugs, and the hope that this volume will be just the encouragement you need to cut a nice piece of linen, pick up that marker, and draw your first original design. I have been a writer virtually all my life, but in 1998, I got serious about pursuing a Masters degree, followed by a PhD in English, with a creative dissertation. I have written and published short fiction, mostly about hard-working Midwestern people, because I love the art of storytelling. Rug making, I learned later, can be another way of preserving stories. Here is a bit more about my love affair with wool.

Whether we know it or not, all of us have been collecting images all our lives, and those images are stored somewhere among our crowded memories: an ivy-covered grave marker, a Van Gogh painting, the rakes hung neatly in the shed, green moss on black tree trunks, an old oak stranded in the corner of a hayfield, Mom’s clematis vine in bloom, Dad in his youth, standing beside his Model A. I wrote this book to encourage rug hookers to draw their own patterns and express those things that mean the most to them. After all, it’s an investment of time to make a rug, so we may as well express the things that matter most to us.

For many, this means finding the courage to draw, and an entire chapter is devoted to spelling out the resources available for learning and building artistic confidence. Our drawings need not be detailed. They need not be spectacular. A simple drawing can result in a memorable rug, and the sooner we begin, the sooner we will find out just how forgiving this art is. DESIGNED BY YOU is chockfull of encouragement, ideas, inspiration, and nearly 150 rugs from across the western hemisphere.

The idea of making good use of leisure time has been fully ingrained in my Midwestern family. I loved hooked rugs from the minute I saw one in a decorating magazine, and learned right away how to make simple mats. This happened in September of 2008 when I had few demands on my time—I was in my business off-season, and fortunately I have a patient husband who didn’t mind a messy kitchen table covered with wool. I was cranking out a mat a week, larger rugs in three weeks, and of course, beginning to design simple pictorials.

As with most arts, there are whole worlds to explore, and I gradually discovered groups and guilds and schools of thought as I entered the web of fiber artists across the US, Canada, and into the British Isles and northern Europe. As I signed up for workshops and classes and retreats, my own skills and sensibilities grew and developed, but even more importantly, I struck up friendships, mostly via email, with teachers and artists all over the place! I joined a generous community, and I give much of the credit for this book to that community who feel just as I do, that every one of us has important memories and images to express. It’s time to let DESIGNED BY YOU nudge you toward creating a body of work that is yours, that expresses what you love and who you are. Your loved ones will treasure the mats you create, because they are uniquely yours.

I wish you courage, creativity, persistence, and joy as you express yourself through images in wool. May you soon hold in your hands the first of many rugs DESIGNED BY YOU.