HOOKING WORKSHOPS

"Tangled Animals"
Designed and Hooked by Emma Webber

My mother, back in Ohio, taught me how to hook rugs in 1948. She had me begin with the log cabin pattern and built a small frame of lathe. She gave me an antique hook that had belonged to her Aunt Em. I returned home to Oregon.

After the first success, I decided to learn to hook without a frame and have been doing so ever since. Aunt Em's hook wore out and my husband made a similar one by pounding a large nail into a piece of wood and then filing the hook on one end. I hooked many rugs for my own home and organized the neighbors into a rug club. We made both braided rugs and hooked rugs and taught ourselves. Unfortunately my not using a frame influenced them all. We found our material in the leftover wool scraps from our braided rugs and used yarns as well. We did not get into dyeing. I feel I do not fit into the modern methods of rug hooking but it is too late to change my ways. I have never taught anyone else besides my old neighbors to hook like I do because I know it is unorthodox.

My first patterns were "Pennsylvania Dutch" or motifs that our children asked for in their readings: space items or bear claws and arrows. Then I found a geometric pattern that could be filled in with abstract colors and that became my signature pattern. I always have one on the go. The Dorset Sound traditional pattern of "Tangled Animals" caught my eye and I have used it in the last few decades. This rug is number four of the series. I have made thirteen of them. I am now invloved in a Co-op and sell both braided rugs and hooked rugs and hangings in our store. My computer is not hooked up to the net, so contact me by "snail mail".

Emma Webber
January 16, 1997

P.O. Box 745
Petaluma, CA 94953
(707) 762-3728

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