Woman designs, hand-crafts area rugs
Imagine an area rug, bearing the family coat of arms, on the floor of the entry hall of your castle, or maybe custom-designed floor mats for a classic Jaguar. Tina Marie Bell can craft either.
Bell moved to Coeur d’Alene from Ontario, Ore., four years ago after marrying the Rev. Patrick Bell, rector of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church. In Ontario she had been part owner and operator of a beauty shop and also worked in a jewelry store in which she was part owner. Settled in her new home in Hayden, she began a search for a new business that would satisfy her desire for creativity.
“I was burned out on what I had been doing,” she says. In her search for a new business, she first contacted a franchise broker. Then, on her own, she discovered a market for custom-designed, hand-crafted area rugs. “This appealed to me because it offered an opportunity for an artistic outlet where I could work with color and design,” she says.
She found a qualified instructor, Tami Sullivan, who has a studio in Seattle where she both teaches and makes rugs. Bell contacted Sullivan and spent a week on the West Side learning to design, cut, inlay and sculpt area rugs.
Bell explains that her learning project was to make small, sample rugs and also a 2-foot-by-3-foot corner section of a larger rug. “My design was complicated and took lot of time.” She says. “But I actually made five or six rugs during that week.”
Bell currently operates “Rugs by Design” from her home and has her work shop in a small room in the lower level of the house.
Her work area has blue sky and clouds painted on the walls and she explains the reason. “This used to be my husband’s train room – he’s a model train enthusiast but he gave it up to my rugs. He even built me the work table.” On the table is a rectangular rug on which she is working. The rug has a wide border with pattern of leaves scattered across its face.
The rug has cut out “holes” in the shape of leaves. In the cut out Bell will glue a leaf made from a different colored carpet and, for texture, she will carve veins in the leaf with an electric razor. She says that her past experience razor-cutting hair has made sculpting rugs easier.
“In designing the rugs I use a program that was created for designing stained glass windows,” she says. “There are no programs for designing rugs.”
Bell explains the exacting process required to make a quality, custom, hand-made rug.
First comes the consultation with the client and then she creates the design on her computer.
Once the design is complete she sets to work on the body of the rug. If the rug is to have a border, as is the case with rug on the work table, the border is joined to the center of the rug with a special glue. With the body or base of the rug complete she then, using her leaf pattern, cuts out the shape of the leaf and then cuts a new leaf in a different color to inlay into the leaf-shaped hole on the rug.
To reinforce the edges where the inlays join the body of the rug, she uses a special tape applied to the back side of the carpet to further bond the edge of the cut that has been glued to the body of the rug. Before the final backing goes onto the rug, extra reinforcement material, larger than the leaf, is glued on.
Bell says that in creating her rugs, she likes to work with an interior decorator because the decorator has the best comprehensive view of the home and its furnishings. When working directly with an individual client, particularly when the home is new, she advises the client to complete the home and furnish it. “Then, I can coordinate the rug with upholstery, pictures and whatever else is in the home,” she says.
She created a contemporary design for one dining room that had a glass-topped table shaped like a bow tie – narrow in the middle and wide at each end. This rug went under the table and repeated the shape of the table.
“For one rustic room, I photographed a bear on a pattern of the upholstery of a chair and transferred the digital picture to my computer. That way I could make an exact copy of the bear that I inlayed into the rug along with trees and deer.
Her next project, after she finishes the leaf rug, will be to design and make a rug 5 feet wide and 9 feet long that will lie in the chancel of St. Luke’s. The rug will be a re-creation of one of the stained glass windows in the 100-year-old church and will be a memorial to a deceased member of the congregation. A member of the church will donate the materials and Bell will give her time to design and make the rug.