Thanksgiving

Dimensions: 47" x 29"
Materials: #3-, 4-, 5-, and 6-cut wool on linen
Designed by Pearl McGown and hooked by Gail Dufresne, Lambertville, New Jersey, 1997.
Featured in: Celebration VIII

"I loved every minute of hooking Thanksgiving. It was when I was into very fine 'finger shading' most loved intimate detail. My sister, Yvonne Wood, had hooked this design before I did and told me that it HAD to be a very green rug because, after all, vegetables are green. I set out to prove her wrong and scoured botanical drawings searching for vegetable varieties that were not green. I found that just about every vegetable comes in a color other than green! This rug took me quite a while to hook since I had to find the exact colors for all of those vegetables, and I am not sure how much I dyed in 1997 when the rug was completed. I was lucky enough to have Maggie McLea as my 'home' teacher, and I imagine that she did at least some of the dyeing for me. In 1997 most people were using one wool for their background and I did not want to do that, so I got several different colored wools that were close in value and mixed them in. When I hooked the center, I first hooked directionally in huge swirls. The rug was hung in a rug exhibit at the Green Mountain Rug School in Vermont, and when I first saw it hanging, I hated the way the middle looked. Too busy! I still remember that it took me two hours just to pull out all of the wool when I got home. I used the same wool but hooked it to resemble a pond of water. I added a lizard and a ladybug, which had become a tradition by then."
- Gail Dufresne, Celebration Hall of Fame 2018