Bobbie Pendleton, who in a previous article (WWF Oct. 2002) is referred to as “Islesboro’s premiere hooker,” is still hard at work perfecting her craft – creating new hooked rugs and restoring vintage hooked rugs and lampshades.
Pendleton, a native Californian, now living in Rockland, via Islesboro, has been hooking for more then a decade. Her experience in felting and as a decorative artist, painting design work on floors, walls and furniture, has helped her master the delicate skills needed to restore vintage rugs. The restoration can be costly, but the emotional and sentimental attachment felt for these family heirlooms, looking beautiful again, can make up for the cost of repair.
This past summer Pendleton added another fiber skill to her roster, that of restoring vintage lampshades. The first one she restored involved scouring the area’s antique shops looking for old lace to replace fabric that had crumbled to dust. She was successful, and enjoys the fabric hunt a great deal. Pendleton also goes on-line to look for vintage fabrics to match projects and use in her artistic work.
The largest vintage rug repair job that Pendleton has undertaken involved an Islesboro family’s 18 by 20 foot geometric rug. She has repaired it twice, traveling to the island to work on it. Pendleton often will travel to work on rugs too large to be removed from a house.
A valuable rug might need to be retired from its service on the floor, and Pendleton will prepare that rug for a new life on the wall. She will repair the rug and then frame it so it can be admired for many more years to come. In previous times, hooked rugs often didn’t stay on the floor anyway. They usually were on beds to keep people warm, Pendleton says, and were only put back on the floor when company came.
Old rugs may need either yarn or old fabric to repair, depending on the nature of the deterioration. Often, a rug was made from clothes the family had around the house. Grandpa’s old shirts and Grandma’s worn-out dresses were often shredded or cut into strips to create a rug. Also found in many New England homes are rugs hooked by sailors, bored on their voyages, who used old sailcloth to make rugs. These rugs were brought back to the family hearth where they were used and cherished.
When Pendleton creates a new rug, it’s often at the request of someone who wants a special design or scene. Pendleton has created many animal rugs, specific house scenes, lighthouses, and even mermaids at customers’ request. Her graceful, detailed work results in a rug of lasting beauty, a true work of art. A person may not even want to wipe their feet on such a rug.
For more information on having Bobbie restore a rug or lampshade, or design one especially for you, call her at 207-542-1199 or contact her at bpen@midcoast.com.