Hello everyone. We hope you’ve had a great start to the summer. To celebrate all of the beautiful roses we’ve seen in bloom this past month, Ania decided that this month’s rug of the month should be her “Marie” rug – which is suitability a rose. The “Marie” rug uses #3 strips – which makes for some great shading.
See the completed rug below, and a number of questions that Ania answered about the process behind the rug’s creation:
What inspired you to do this project?
This project was completed while I was working towards my McGown teaching certification – this pattern was the last rug I needed to complete to get my certification.
Why did you decide this rug is a good choice to represent June?
I thought it was appropriate for the season. Beautiful roses are blooming everywhere. I like roses, and I think they’re very pretty. I used to grow them at my first house, and I thought they looked so gorgeous.
What aspect of this rug are you most proud of? What did you think was most difficult while completing this rug?
That I finally finished it. I was worried at every step of the process about how terrible I thought it looked, and then I finished and suddenly it looked great!
A lot of people make comments to me about how the middle of the rose is lighter than the outer most tips of the petals. That’s unusual as most real roses are the other way around. But what happened is that when I was hooking this rug, I received an image of a rose from my teacher to use as a reference. That image had that same quirk, where the inside was lighter and the outside darker. I couldn’t mentally translate that color scheme so that they would be flipped while I was hooking. My Traumatic Head Injury meant that I couldn’t figure out how to do the inverse colors. It’s interesting though, I started this rug before my injury and finished it after. This rug was a transition into a different way of seeing the world!
How did you color plan around this project?
Simple enough: my favorite color is orange. And so I wanted to do an orange rose. I also deliberately chose the frame so that it would coordinate with the rose.
Did it surprise you when this rug won an award?
It did. I call this my “GD Rose”. I was very frustrated with the process of creating this rug for numerous reasons (one big one was of course dealing with my injury for the first time). It was not an easy rug to do. I started and stopped multiple times before and after my injury. I’m very happy that it turned out how it did.
Let Ania know what you think of her “Marie” rug, below! Have you ever had a life event seriously effect your ability to create your art? Ania would love to hear of any related stories you have.
My Mother's a Hooker 
It’s beautiful, Ania!
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