Recreating a piece of the past......

By Guest Blogger Edwin Corah

The first time I saw the original rug was in Sept. 2015 when I was visiting my wife's aunt in Nova Scotia. I was showing her and her son some of the rugs I had hooked.  My wife's cousin said he had some rugs that his mom's mother had hooked years ago. I said I would like to see them so the next visit we looked at three old rugs. They were in very poor condition, as they had gotten wet and rotted, disintegrating and what was left was pretty much a black mess. I took pictures of the rugs and decided I would hook one of them.  One end of the hit and miss geometric was intact enough to see the original colours and I wanted to recreate it with as close of a colour match as possible.

I had tried to find the pieces of wool to do this but had trouble so I waited till I went back to Nova Scotia which was September 2016 and brought some of the rugs and pictures to Encompassing Designs in Mahone Bay to speak to Shane on matching these colours and he was up for the challenge. He did a wonderful job. I created the pattern and started hooking the rug in October and finished in December 2016. Edges still need to be finished.
       
The original rug was one of my wife's grandmothers from Princeport Nova Scotia. Her daughter remembers her mother drawing the design on jute backing and hooking the rug with dyed wool stripes that were made mostly from strips of used wool clothing. Stanfield's "long johns" were frequently used and cut into strips as well. She recalls the rug design was her mom's creation and was made during the Great Depression in the 1930's.