The Search for Rugs
With so much of the flooring in the house incomplete (or not even started!), it’s hard to begin imagining the rugs those floors will eventually need. But for the past couple years, I’ve been creating some needlepoint prospects with great hopes (they’re fun but take enormous time) and collecting upholstery samples with the thought that some of them might fit those spaces that will require the soft touch of a rug. Upholstery fabric suppliers will usually offer a swatch of about 12” square for a small fee and some begging (the swatches are usually 6” square). I continue to check out home-dec departments at JoAnn’s etc. to find something that might work. Scale is important and can be deceiving. Here are photos of my progress in my rug search so far.
I saw a rug like this on Pinterest a while ago and liked it. However, learning that Gustav took “great pains to find the kind of rug that will harmonize in character as well as color with the complete scheme of Craftsman furnishings”, I fear he may have rejected this one. He thought a rug should be “unobtrusive in design, so that it helps to give a quiet and harmonious background to the furnishings of the room”. The coloring “should be soft and subdued”, leafy greens and browns similar to the color of his furniture and the home’s woodwork. The material should be “high grade wool” and “finished with a thick firm pile” that is “in keeping with the sturdy fiber and dull mellow surface of the wood”.
This is my design for the (wild) needlepoint rug. Some changes evolved in progress, and I added the border design later. I stitch on 28 count canvas with regular DMC embroidery floss. With stitches that tiny, even a small area rug can be a lengthy project. Below are more examples of rugs I may or may not end up using. To balance the labor intensive needlepoints are nice rugs made from upholstery fabric supply swatches.
