Reader’s Gallery: Life Stories

Everglade, 44″ x 55″, yarn and #8-cut hand-dyed wool on linen. Designed and hooked by Sharon Townsend, Altoona, Iowa, and Marathon, Florida, 2008. TOM TUSSEY PHOTOGRAPHY

Sharon’s first attempt at rug hooking happened in 1986 and involved Pearl McGown’s pattern, In the Meadows, which she tried with a #3 cut. Sharon said that she had no cutter or proper rug hooking frame (she was working with a quilting frame) and the #3 cut proved daunting. She was particularly challenged by working with eight values in such fine cuts. When she looked at cut strips of wool, she had a difficult time seeing the variations in value, so distinguishing between her unhooked strips of cut wool was a challenge. And she did not have the patience for working with small strips and loops. Sharon never finished that piece, but she loved the overall experience. Her teacher was Nancy Elliott at Living History Farms in Urbandale, Iowa.

Two years later, Sharon signed up for a class at the Deco-rah Rug School in Decorah, Iowa. Friends had been raving for years about their own wonderful experiences there. Sharon decided to explore primitive rugs with Barb Uphoff. Sharon mentioned that she loved sunflowers; Barb handed her a piece of textured plaid. With Barb’s tutelage and encouragement, the textured plaid wool, and a picture of a sunflower, Sharon finally completed her first rug. She learned that she loved working with wide cuts and decided early on to stick with primitives. Once Sharon found the cut and style she preferred, she began to use her own life as inspiration for her hooked rug designs.

Romie Orr invited Sharon to Teacher’s Workshop, and she became McGown certified. Then Ramona Maddox invited her to teach at Castles in the Clouds Rug School where Sharon had once been a student. Sharon began hooking just for the fun of it; little did she know that she would soon be teaching all over the United States. Upon completing her training for McGown certification, she moved away from hooking commercial patterns.

Sharon now focuses exclusively on creating her own original designs. She prefers to work on linen, and #8 is her favorite cut. An avid student, Sharon continues to take classes and her teachers have included Marjorie Judson, Molly Cole-grove, Pris Buttler, Diane Phillips, Jule Marie Smith, and Rae Harrell. I have had the good fortune to have her in one of my classes, but I believe I learned more from her than she did from me.

Sharon has had a distinguished rug hooking career. A beloved teacher, master dyer, and scholar, she has been known to appear in period dress when teaching students about the historical background of rug hooking. In 2001, she authored Historic Colors of America, a dye book inspired by the color chart for the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (SPNEA). The dye formulas were developed and tested by Sharon. In 2009, the Green Mountain Rug Hooking Guild was honored to showcase Sharon’s body of work. She was a Featured Artist that year at the guild’s Hooked in the Mountains exhibit at the Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont. RHM

Years ago at a rug hooking auction, Sharon bid on an old burlap pattern that depicted a giant scroll. It was identified only as “No. 548 Symmetry Scroll.” According to Sharon, “I made a copy of it using Red Dot, but I had no idea of how to use the pattern.” In 2007, she took a class with Judith Dallegret, who stressed using negative space to enhance one’s designs. “I drew a sketch where the giant scroll became the body of a fantasy flamingo. When I showed it to Judith, she encouraged me to make the flamingo large. When I drew it on my linen, I added many more scrolls to the body to make it big enough. It took me a while to get around to hooking the rug.

“In the meantime, I collected many yarns, from pink through coral to deep plum. I gathered everything that might even remotely be called a flamin-go color. This is the best part of hooking … getting ready for the project. Because of the heavy body, the lower part of the rug needed all the sprouting scrolls to balance the composition. Are they the beginnings of more flamingos?

“This is one rug where I practiced restraint. Instead of using all the yarns in the piece, I chose carefully and added only where I thought it might make a good statement. I dyed the wool for the background as a large dip dye, with plum and red and turquoise. In addition, I dyed many values and off-colors of turquoise. I hooked a single line of red on the edge to bring that color down to the very bottom of the rug. I planned the irregular border from the start. [In 2010], I entered the rug at the Iowa State Fair and it won best of show in the rug hooking division.”

Sharon says, “When I was a child and thought about Florida, I always thought about the flamingos that live in the Everglades. A number of years ago, we bought a winter home in the Keys and I knew flamingos had to be a part of the décor. This rug shows some of the flamingos that greeted me every winter. They are walking in the beautiful Keys water where sometimes it is hard to see where the ocean meets the horizon. The border is in the style of a Seminole Indian quilt design and was great fun to hook.”

This rug is a tribute to the women who helped Sharon care for her mother during the last years of her life. Daughters Becky and Sue helped with bathing. Granddaughter Lauren sang to her. Sharon’s daughter-in-law, Jody (Lauren’s mother) brought food. Sharon says, “Daughters Katie and Rachel played cards with Mother, and Jenny was message central (as depicted by the telephone in the pocket of one of the figures). All of these women stretched beyond their busy lives to help during the last few years. That is why I depicted the women in the rug with longer arms. They made life easier by their efforts for both the Queen (Mother) and me.”

According to Sharon, “Thursdays I drive old highway 6 from Altoona to Newton, Iowa, to hook with my friends. It is a hilly road much of the way, and leaving Altoona, as I drive east, at the top of one of the hills stands a wonderful pine tree. You can see it from a dis-tance and it seems to stand alone. One day when I returned home, I sketched it, as it seemed to represent my feelings at the time. I could either bend with the circumstances, like a healthy pine tree, or break. The tree was a good omen. It was still standing after many storms because it did bend. When I hooked the tree, I cut the green loops to make it look more like a pine tree. It is the first of three tree pieces I hooked between 2006 and 2009, symbolizing that period of my life.”

“My mother had just died and I went to the Green Mountain Rug Hooking Guild’s show and classes soon after to take a class with Molly Colegrove,” says Sharon. “I brought wool and a design with me. I hooked like a fiend and then came to the part where the rain needed to be long stitched onto the hooking. Molly helped me pick out the right yarn. I have several pictures that my grandmother, Ida, long stitched, and I wanted to use that technique in this piece that was so meaningful to me.”

Preparing for a class on hooked rug landscapes, Sharon photographed many outdoor scenes. One image depicted a single tree and a cornfield ready for harvest. Sharon doubled the greens for the grasses. After hooking the tree leaves, she cut the loops to make them stand out. According to Sharon, “The stalks of the corn are much darker than they should be but I loved the geometric look they gave to the picture.”

The rug hooking community was deeply saddened this year by the passing of Bob Townsend. Sharon hooked this piece shortly after his passing. “The white rabbit is me, standing quiet amidst all the chaos after Bob died. It is a self-portrait.”