sample of rug hooking.SW Women's Fiber Arts Collective (SWFAC) is offering the public the opportunity to learn rug hooking using t-shirts. Member Anita McDaniel will be teaching the class on November 5 and 19, 2023 at 10 am to noon. The registration deadline is October 30, 2023.

Rug hooking is done by pulling strips of material through a stiff woven base with a crochet-type hook mounted in a handle.  You only need to learn one basic stitch and you’ve mastered it.  It has been around for ages, and origin stories vary from the Egyptians to the Vikings but someone, somewhere figured it out, and by the mid 1800’s rug hooking appears in New England and the Canadian Maritime Provinces.  The self-sufficient colonial women decorated and warmed their floors with rugs made with used scraps of wool cut into narrow strips and hooked on burlap sacks. 

Following the tradition of making do with what is on hand, hooking rugs with tee-shirts is becoming popular.  Tee shirts are readily available, cheap (often free) and better to land on your floor as a rug than in the landfill!

In this class you will learn to cut tee shirts into strips, hook a 6” x 6” mat on a burlap backing and finish the mat with binding.  See photo of class project on registration form.  All materials will be supplied.
Anita McDaniel discovered rug hooking while on vacation in New Foundland, Canada in 2016 and has been hooking ever since.  She hooks rugs, pillows, purses and footstools in her original designs.  She is a member of Southwest Women’s Fiber Arts Collective, and her work can be seen at the Grant County Art Guild in downtown Silver City.

To learn more information about the class and to register, please go to our website www.fiberartscollective.org  and go to the class page and click the link for the class.
 
SWFAC was founded in 2005 and is a local, all volunteer, non-profit 501(c)(3) organization with the goal to stimulate and support successful cottage industry in the southwest. To accomplish this, SWFAC members nurture and empower one another. Both novice and skilled SWFAC artists enrich the community by fostering opportunities to gain new experience and expand talent as well as earn income from their art. Please visit SWFAC’s website at www.fiberartscollective.org  to learn more about the organization.