If you are pulling loops and have a comfortable rhythm, you have already graduated from rug hooking 101. Many of the seasoned hookers will know this already but for you newbies here are a couple things you may not realize.
There are no real hard/fast rules in rug hooking but rather guidelines like, pull loops up as high as the width of your wool strip, it is okay to use different size strips in the same rug but if you use #8.5 for most of the rug and use #4 for inside the flower, you need to pull that #4 strip up as high as the #8. Other than that it is follow your heart.
Someone asked me if I would be offended should someone make changes to one of my patterns. My answer was an honest "no I wouldn't be offended" as I've made my own creative changes to others' patterns. There is a caveat with that choice tho ~ you still cannot claim it is your design even after making the changes.
Case in point, 2007 I hooked Kindred Spirits' Crow Sampler, her design shown below.
.png)
Although her design is cute with huge eggs laid by the hens, I envisioned the design for them to be sitting on a straw nest, thus my finished rug ~ it is still Bev Conway's design.
Yet another rug I made changes to is by Bill Laraway named Gossip. This is his original pattern with some of my early redrawing of the design to suit me.
Evelyn gave me a Nola Heidbreder pattern named Golden in the Garden. Naturally it beckoned me to change that Golden into a Rottweiler.
Perhaps one day I will take the rug off the wall and change Ben's head and nose as it doesn't look proportionate to the body.
%20in%20the%20Garden%20redux.JPG)
This is how my boy Ben looked and I hooked it in mostly #8 and #8.5.
%20in%20the%20Garden%20redux.JPG)
There have been a few other patterns I've had to change but won't go into the lengthy detail of the purchased botched antique adaptation of the Mary Comstock rug but you can read a segment about that HERE.
More for you newbies to know...and something I notice often even with rug teachers and people to sell patterns which irks me. There are those folks who put their web site 'watermark' on antique rugs as if it is their brand. An antique rug in public domain and dated 1927 or older is free for anyone to draw and cannot be copywritten. Sometimes people put that watermark on a rug to make people believe they own the rights to draw it and only them.
Not true. Perhaps it would be a friendly thing to do, but that would be a monopoly with a lack of healthy competition. Another thing I've noticed is where a pattern seller will make changes to an antique adaptation (changing a deer to a sheep), (changing a Magdalena animal into something else) and calling it their design.
Nope, again not true, it is still an antique adaptation. It would behoove them to change the wording to something like: inspired by Magdalena Briner Eby, or antique adaptation of Magdalena Briner Eby or if the designer is unknown, that word would do too ~ but it is still an antique adaptation.
Sorry if this was a boring blogpost or seems redundant, but I wanted to write about something and this subject popped in my head. Happy weekend and happy hooking.
Saundra
P.S. Colleen, I cannot respond to you since you are a no-reply blogger. Please introduce yourself thru the E MAIL ME section of my blog so I can add you to my contacts.
Thanks, Saundra. It doesn't hurt to be reminded about adaptations vs designs vs copyright. I know a lot of people pay no attention to this and it can be frustrating when someone copies or adapt someone else's design without permission or acknowledgement.
ReplyDeleteI've been marrying wool and dying. I found out that bleeding colors out of wool takes longer than just dyeing and can't be rushed but I'm enjoying the process anyway. I'm taking pictures as I go. Somehow, I'm not rushed to start hooking this time and I want to get all my wool ready before I start.
Enjoy your weekend too.
Hugs, Julia
This is an interesting post ....sometimes I like to change the pattern to make it more personal to me and hope my children will want to keep it when I'm gone .
ReplyDeleteWhen I first started hooking I didn't know how important it was to have the patterns drawn straight on the grain , I just thought they were all like that ....until when you completed it & it was wonky ....those little attention to details is important . ....you learn by those mistakes . Little lessons you learn along the way . Thanks Saundra !
Great post. Good information
ReplyDeleteCathy
Very well put. My current gripe is having bought a pattern because I liked the design, I've received a pattern (s) that the seller had made such drastic changes to that it was not what I purchased. Another is I bought a kit because there were materials involved that I would not have had access to expecting the same design and colors. Not what I received. I asked the seller about it and first she said she thought another colorway would look better, then she mumbled about not being able to dye some of the colors. Sorry, then don't sell it. So sadly misrepresentation works both ways.
ReplyDeleteGreat advice,,,, thanks saundra!!
ReplyDeleteElaine🏡🏡
This is Kim. I love that you took the time to explain all of this. I have always wondered about it. I really do love how you changed the patterns to be what you liked. I have done that a few times but always felt guilty. What lovely rugs. So thank you for taking the time to explain this. I don't think I have ever read about it before.
ReplyDeleteDont get me started on copyrights. I use to copyright my designs, only to have others tweak them and put there own copy right on them. When I called the copyright office, they told me is was all legal....so I quit spending money on copyrighting my designs. Janice
ReplyDeleteThis sort of thing happens in nearly all art/craft fields. Even in industry - look at clothing, a garment is seen on a famous person and a version of it on discount store racks in weeks. I'm not saying it's right by any means! OTOH, in the art world, copying the masters is has been a way for students to develop their skills for centuries.
ReplyDeleteAs to watermarking photos, it's my understanding that it applies to the photo itself, not what's in the photo. Complicated indeed! It's no wonder some lawyers make entire careers of copyright law.
I meant to add about the student artist copying the masters - approved as long as the work wasn't passed of as being done by the master artists.
DeleteCopyrights can be a prickly area and is, indeed, a sore subject with most who design their own work. However, I have also found that there are those who use copyright only when they want to "protect" what they perceive as their own original work but have much looser standards when it comes to other designers' works. It is something people profess to be experts on but most aren't. All I need do is a quick google/bing/etc. search and can come up with hundreds of my original photos that have been "pinned" or reposted somewhere - all without my permission. Just because one puts something on the internet doesn't mean that it can be reposted - with or without "credit" given. But I suppose that's a whole other can of worms as they say. ~Robin~ (TheCrankyCrow)
ReplyDelete