Designing Storm Warning rug

 During a workshop with Susan Feller at the Green Mountain Rug School in Montpelier, Vermont, I started to design a new textile piece. Inspired by the Weather Network's storm watches and warnings of the day, I began to collect weather references such as symbols used by meteorologists, cloud photos, morse code, poems by Mary Oliver and a wonderful illustrated book by Eric Sloane called "Look at the Sky and Tell the Weather".

Once some of the material was gathered, I began by making some quick thumbnail sketches to work through my initial ideas and to play with symbols. I have always loved the drama of thunderstorms and quickly decided that I needed some cumulonimbus  clouds as well as some dramatic elements. Did I mention that I am a member of the Cloud Appreciation Society?

As I worked with the drawing materials, I began to combine the symbols related to meteorology with the dots and dashes of morse code. 

I moved on to working with pastel on a large scale and really started to enjoy myself!

I finally added some lines to suggest lightning and interference. Those all got me to remember my father who also loved thunderstorms. We used to call each other to say "On va n'avoir une maudite!" which was our code for "Watch out, we're going to have a big storm!"

This is where I stopped with the drawing and preparation for this hooked piece. I chose to work with wool in a traditional rug hooking technique using a fairly fine cut of wool because I do intend to have more detail in the cloud portion which is now simply depicted using grey pastel in the drawing.