A Distinctly American Craft Finds A Home In Sandy Hook

By Kaaren Valenta

When it comes to rug hooking, the old Yankee adage that says “Use it up, wear it out, make do, or do without” certainly fits.

And the women – a self-described fabric junkie, a hooker, an artist, and a quilter – who sat hooking rugs around a backroom table at The Mill in Sandy Hook recently, couldn’t agree more. These women, and several others, gathered for the rug hooking class that is held at the antiques shop on the second Saturday of each month from 9 am to noon.

The classes are led by Debbie Caiola and Pinky McQuade, sisters who have a business called Wool In Hand. They sell hand-colored woolens, kits, frames, hoops, and cutters – everything a beginning hooker and an experienced hooker might need.

“Rug hooking is appealing for many reasons,” Ms Caiola said. “It’s a distinctly American craft and very appealing to people who like antiques. It’s easy to do – this isn’t brain surgery – so once you’ve got the technique, you’ve got it. But color planning is an art, as is creating the design you want to hook.”

Beginning hookers often start with a kit – following someone else’s vision – then go on to create their own designs.

“Kits are a fun, quick, fast, beginning project,” Ms Caiola said. “The nice thing about the craft is that a beginner can buy a simple hook and frame to start. They can come here to use our fabric cutter any time, before they get into buying the rest of the supplies.”

“I started hooking rugs when I was 18,” said artist Beth Kemf of Southbury. “I’m sort of like my son’s mother-in-law, who said she’s never met a craft she didn’t like.”

Pati Seidel, of Birch Hill Road in Newtown, is a quilter and fabric artist with a business called Pati Point. She buys clothing at Goodwill stores and uses every scrap of the fabric, even the seams.

“I cut off the seams and use them in the garden to tie up tomato plants; I recycle the collars and cuffs, I use the seams in rug hooking and the fabric in quilts,” she said.

Some of the most well-known hooked rugs are the Grenfele rugs, rugs with a northern motif that were hooked in Nova Scotia around the turn of the century.

“Missionaries taught the Eskimo natives how to hook rugs,” Ms Caiola explained. “They used red woolen undergarmets to create roses and old feed bags as the base, although we’ve since learned that is not the best way. Acid migration breaks down the fabric [of feed bags]. Cotton and linen is much more forgiving.”

Most old hand-hooked rugs seen at antiques shows are from the Colonial Revival period after 1920, she said. The earlier rugs are very, very expensive and very collectible.

“When rug hooking really started as a craft is one of the areas of great debate,” Beth Kemf said. “Some say it goes back as early as the beginning of the 1900s, others say it wasn’t until Victorian times. No one really has done a study that documents it.”

Earlier generations of women, living without the benefits of central heating, first hooked bed rugs to keep their families warm. Then the rugs were used to cover tables, and finally they were used on the floor.

“In Nova Scotia they hooked with yarn, not wool,” Ms Caiola said. “There was a proliferation of hookers in Nova Scotia because those winters were long.”

Books on rug hooking note that fabrics were hooked in Egypt as far back as the 5th Century, but the craft never became popular until it reached the shores of America.  Here it became a distinctly American folk art.

 The craft is popular today because it is easy yet provides a perfect opportunity for the hooker to create something unique.

“Everyone has an underlying need to create,” Ms Caiola said. “Everyone has to do something to feed your soul – even if it doesn’t feed your family.”