Blast From the Past: Hook a Cup of Herb Tea

I believe every part of a rug should be fun to hook—even the background. My first big rug hooking project was a large rug with a repeated heart motif on a black background. I dreaded hooking all that plain black—it was just too boring. Of the 300 hours it took to complete the rug, half of them were hooking the background. I vowed that in future projects I would make the background as fun to hook as the central design.

As I started designing and hooking more, I incorporated movement into my patterns by using spirals, tumbling roses and leaves, buzzing bees, swirling stars, moons, and hearts. These active motifs had the. movement and character I was looking for and made the rugs visually interesting. I echoed their movement in the background, creating swirling lines of wool around swirling characters. The background became much less tedious to hook. You can hook backgrounds in straight lines or random patterns, or with a third method of movement, called mirroring. When you mirror you follow the outlines of your motifs as you hook until the background is filled. My backgrounds mirror the swirling movements of the motifs, rather than the shapes of the motifs themselves.