Signing rugs

Yesterday at the Kirby Hooking Circle, some of us were chatting about our rug signatures. When I first started to rug hook, I signed my rugs with the conventional block abbreviation that rug hookers are known for: my AD can be found in the corners of my rugs. I was never one to try to hide my AD in the loops by hooking it the same color as the background, but I tried to hook it so that it went along with the rest of the rug and wasn't really noticed. Here are some examples.

When I returned to rug hooking this season after a five-year maternity leave, and I was about to put my AD on Mr. Toad's Garden, I stopped and asked myself why - why do we as rug hookers want to disguise our signatures, why do we want to hide them in the loops? This isn't the case with other types of art such as paintings where the artist's signature adorns the pieces.

So I experimented with hooking my signature - my actual signature - on Mr. Toad's Garden. And it worked. I wasn't able to put my signature on my 10 by 10 mats because the mat was too small. But I did manage it on Scare Jack too (which is almost finished now). I just use scraps and hook my first name. Then I hook the background around it. I look forward to doing the same on Transfiguration which will have taken a year to complete and deserves a signature I think.