Gene’s Rug Hooking Blog

When Miss Weigle gave me her favorite purple suit, it was with these instructions: “I loved this suit and always intended to put it into a special rug. Now that I can’t hook any more, will you do that for me?” I took the suit, but did not, exactly, follow her instructions …
Instead of making a single rug with her suit, I put out the word to dozens of hookers around the world offering just a piece or two of her old purple suit if the reciever would incorporate them into a rug they were making and then write Miss Weigle with a description of the rug. Dozens of hookers took me up on the offer and before long she was recieving letters from around the world. At that particular time, I was recreating two rugs for FDR’s Hyde Park. She was particularly pleased to know that I managed to sneak in a piece of her suit in the Presidential Flag rug on display there. In that last year of her life, she recieved enough letters to fill a scrap book! She never got tired of having the letters read to her and found ways of getting every visitor she had to re-read the entire lot. As a solitary hooker, it never ceased to amaze her that there was such a vigorous community of fellow artists who not only got together to hook, but cared about an old blind hooker they had never met.
I still have a bit of that suit and manage to work in at least one little strip in just about everything I make. One of the last things she ever wrote to me was: “I never thought my old purple suit would wind up being spread all around the world.” In truth, it’s not finished yet!

Over the years, I lost touch with Miss Weigle. In fact, I thought she had passed away. After becoming so involved with rug hooking, I mentioned to my mother that it “was a shame Miss Weigle never knew I took up her art form.” Imagine my surprise when I found out that she was very much alive, although now blind, and in the same nursing home as my aunt. I wrote her immediately and we started making plans for a reunion.
Although Miss Weigle had been in the nursing home for some time, she had kept her home just like it was the day she moved out. I was particularly glad that she decided for us to meet there as I had very happy memories of the place. Never having payed much attention to the exterior of her house, I studied it as I waited for her to arrive. I’ll never forget the odd feeling I got as I realized that her Illinois house – a pre-Civil War, modified Greek Revival … was exactly like the pre-Civil War, modified Greek Revival house where I lived in Southern California — exactly the same! In fact, after getting inside, I realized that the place where I hooked in my home was the same exact place where she had sat and hooked in hers. I know it sounds like a made up story, but it’s the truth! We had a great day. I looked at her rugs and she showed me things – she could remember exactly where everything was located and had her executor fetch them on command. For my part in the show and tell I had a brought a cat’s paw rug “in progress” knowing that she could “see” it by feeling. I left with new memories, some old rug hooks, her floor frame, pattern idea book and favorite purple wool suit that she had been saving for something special. It would be hard to come up with something more “special” than that reunion.

One of the questions I am most often asked is: “What made you start hooking rugs?” The answer would have to be: “A deep childhood memory!”
When I was about 12, I started collecting antiques. This hobby brought me into contact with a very nice antique dealer in my home town of Albion, Illinois. Her name was Betty Weigle. She was very patient with me and literally mentored me in the art of true collectables. She would patiently give me little verbal lessons when I visited, as well as loan me books and periodicals on the subject. I learned to pay attention to things she valued because they almost always turned out to be special. In the corner of her home was a large frame on which she made hand hooked rugs. I remember well standing there watching her demonstrate the art form with her latest project … thinking to myself: “That’s the ugliest thing I ever saw!” However, years later when I ran into some very inexpsensive hooked rugs at a yard sale, I understood their value and bought them because “Miss Weigle said these were valuable.”
A few years after that purchase, while bored with my 25 year hobby of weaving, I decided to try my had at making my own hooked rug. I got some burlap, a crochet hook and my wife’s quilt frames. Three weeks later I finished my first rug … needless to say, I was hooked.