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The hobby which led to this multiple virtuosity is hooking, a simple old-fashioned handcraft now enjoying renewed popularity. For most of its devotees hooking results in nothing more startling than two or three prized handmade rugs in bright nosegay patterns. But Dorothy's hooking produced nearly forty rugs before she quit making them and began experimenting with a new application for this ancient handcraft, namely, hooked pictures, which are framed and hung on walls like oil paintings. Already she has made about twenty such pictures.

The technique of picture hooking is identical with rug hooking except for a few minor variations. Both are inexpensive hobbies which transform scraps of discarded clothing into treasured home adornments. The only things required are a piece of burlap, a soft wood frame on which to tack it, some vellum or tracing paper and typewriter carbon paper for transferring the design to the burlap, a steel hook like a crochet hook with a handle, some narrow strips of cloth cut from pieces of wool dyed in a variety of colors and shades, and, in the case of pictures, a frame for mounting. A beginning hooker may start with either a rug or a picture.

If picture hooking is chosen, Mrs. Lawless recommends beginning with a picture about ten by fifteen inches instead of one double that size, which she likes to make. For the design, she recommends the beginner use an easy flower or fruit motif, or a simple landscape, instead of the elaborate designs found in Dorothy's popular pictures, a single one of which may include buildings, people, animals, vehicles, vegetation, snow, clouds, and sun or moon.

The rewards of picture hooking are two-fold, Mrs. Lawless has found. One reward is in having beautiful pictures to embellish the walls of her home. This was—and still is—her primary purpose in making pictures. The second reward is an added one, the cash income they bring her.

MRS. LAWLESS'S first hooking was on rugs and began just before World War II when she found herself with a new house for which she was using period furniture but for which she lacked suitable floor coverings. One day in a beauty shop she happened upon a magazine article about how to hook rugs. Nothing could be more in keeping with her eighteenth century furniture than hooked rugs, she reasoned, so why not make some?

About the same time in the builders' debris about her new house she spied a burlap bag the tile setters had left behind. She picked it up, ripped out the stitching and spread the flat piece of burlap before the living room fireplace. The burlap was about a yard square, and she tried to visualize it finished in a block design the magazine article had recommended for beginners. How large to make the.blocks? What colors? How about a simple flower with a few petals and a couple of leaves, in alternate blocks? At home she retrieved some cast-off woolen clothing. She procured a hook and set about making her first rug.

It didn't take long to finish it. She was dexterous and had a hard driving desire to make many rugs to beautify her home. She was very proud of the first one when it was finished and spread out on its destined place on the living room hearth.

But she didn't tarry to admire it; with some visualization she quickly set about making another. As it took form, it carried Mrs. Lawless to even greater enthusiasm.

"The first one was primitive in style," she explains, "with solid colors and a rigid pattern of simple alternating blocks. Flowers and leaves had none of the shading which adds so much to the charm of hooked designs. But to me it looked simply wonderful!"

"Most any hooked rug looks good," she laughingly added, "if it is seen alone."

The second one, when finished, did look better than the first but it couldn't displace it in her affections nor in the place of honor in front of the living room fireplace. It went to grace another room. It had scarcely been laid on the floor before a third one was begun.

DURING THIS time Mrs. Lawless was working as a saleswoman in a real estate office besides making a home for her husband, Philip, and her small son, John. She spent every possible spare moment at her hooking, staying home evenings, week-ends and holidays to make rugs.

As her speed in hooking increased, her skill as a designer grew by leaps, each new rug being lovelier than the last. By the time the sixth was completed she knew she would not want to keep the first ones, and she began disposing of them for little or nothing. Rug number two was sold for $3.50. The buyer's dog chewed up one corner of it, and Dorothy hooked in that part of it a second time gratis. Rug number three brought $4.50. One rug was traded for a Currier and Ives plate which was hard to get—it was wartime now—with a dollar to boot.

But as the rugs came tumbling off Dorothy's little hooking frame in ever-increasing loveliness, and the fame of her designs spread, the prices rose. The rugs were all for sale—all except number one, which still is prized within her family—for as each succeeding one was completed, she felt that it did not represent the best designing she could do. Soon the rugs were bringing $25, then $35, and at length a small half-round welcome rug brought $75.

As the number of rugs passed the thirty mark and neared forty, Mrs. Lawless. knew she had achieved designs she wanted to keep permanently. This was about three years after she had completed her first rug. Now she turned down an offer of $285 for a round rug sixty-two inches across in a beautiful Dresden plate pattern, and having retained several favorites, for the time being she rested on her oars as a designer of rugs.

SOME OF Mrs. Lawless's other latent talents had begun simmering on the back of the stove, while she zealously hooked rugs, and now one of them was coming to a boil. The Los Angeles Times, in its Sunday Home Magazine section, features illustrated articles about outstanding homes in Southern California. Talk about Dorothy's marvelous hooked rugs and period furniture reached the editors and as a result the magazine published an article with color photographs about the Lawless home in Los Angeles. One of the photographs was used as the cover illustration for the issue. Mrs. Lawless immediately was engulfed in a deluge of mail from the magazine's readers praising her rugs and asking how to make them.

Her reaction to these letters was characteristic of her developing hardheaded business woman's outlook: why not write an article about how she hooks beautiful rugs and sell the article to one of the big national magazines? She put to work the training in writing she had received at the Oklahoma Central State Teacher's College from which she had been graduated. Editors of Better Homes and Gardens looked over the results, accepted her article, and scheduled its publication for a winter number nearly a year away. In the meantime would she kindly send her rugs east for color photography to illustrate the article?

"When the rugs were expressed back to me," she recalls, "how much do you think they were valued for insurance against loss? One thousand dollars for the large one, $600 and $400 for the others!"

The rugs "looked like a million" when they appeared in color with her article in the January, 1950, issue. Again Mrs. Lawless was engulfed in a deluge of letters about rugs, this time from readers of the magazine all over America.

IN THE meantime business woman Lawless had organized a company to sell patterns of her best rugs stamped on burlap with instructions for coloring and shading. She was swamped with orders for the ones which Better Homes and Gardens readers had seen pictured in the magazine.

So many of these people asked for further details and instructions that Mrs. Lawless decided there was a field for a monthly magazine for hookers. Her husband was skeptical about such a venture, especially since she would do all the writing.

"You will tell all about hooking in a few issues," he said: "Then what will you find to write about?"

The magazine, The Hooker's Delight, is in the fourth year of publication and its editor still finds plenty of things to write about. An article about some phase of hooking, and an outline drawing of some flower, with directions for coloring and shading is included in each issue.

Her success with magazine articles encouraged her to begin writing a book for hookers. She called it "Rug Hooking and Braiding," and added a subtitle which, although commonplace enough, doubtless gives the secret of her tremendous drive and energy: "For Pleasure and Profit." Her manuscript was accepted in time by Studio-Crowell, New York, which published the book in December, 1952. It is a 205-page book—with sixty illustrations, eight of them in color.

MEANWHILE Mrs. Lawless was living the life of a successful journalist as articles carrying her byline and dealing with home decorating handcrafts, hooking, needlepoint, and quilting began appearing in various other magazines. And it was about this time she decided that at last she could do something about her closet full of rugs. There had not been room enough in the Lawless home to display all the rugs she had kept and she had used a closet for storing some of them. These she took out to show so many times that her closet full of rugs became a standing joke among her friends. Now she went hunting for a larger house and found one which she and her husband bought. In this new home she could find place on her floors for her closet full of rugs—or most of them, at least.

"Not only does this new home have more and larger rooms," she explains, "but it has two fireplaces—room for two hearth rugs instead of one—and two mantels, each calling for pictures."

The pictures over the mantels at first glance seem to be oil paintings in the style of old fashioned prints, but closer inspection shows they are hooked. One is a moonlit village street scene, and the other a Southern plantation home beside a river, both showing people and horse-drawn vehicles, with a steamboat in the distance in the plantation scene.

"People mistake my hooked pictures for oil paintings at first sight," Mrs. Lawless says. "I like them better than oil paintings; colors in wool have a softness and warmth which oils lack. 'Painting with wool,' I sometimes call my picture hooking."

Mrs. Lawless had begun hooking pictures while she and her family still lived in the smaller house. Although its floors in time had carried all the rugs her flair for home decoration could find room for—and there was a closet full besides—her walls did not bear their full share of adornment. As she rested from rug hooking, she considered those walls. Ah, yes! A lovely framed picture over that mantel! Something old-fashioned, like the furniture and rugs. Could she make it herself—perhaps by using her now idle hook and hooking frame? Hooked picture rugs were not new but they were not hung on walls; they were laid on floors to be walked upon. Well, she would hook a picture of such beauty and refinement it would grace any wall!

Favorite, among the scattering of adornments already on her walls was a Currier and Ives print of a snow-covered farmstead, a gift from her mother. She decided to experiment with an adaptation of the print done in the same brilliant coloring which marked her rugs. She transferred a scale outline of the print to a piece of burlap about thirty inches wide. Now she made ready to hook her first picture.

In addition to farm buildings, the outline showed a man, a dog, a yoke of oxen with sled, and a colorful sunset, all with much smaller and more intricate details than any of the forty-odd rugs Mrs. Lawless had made. But her skill was equal to the challenge and presently her first hooked picture was framed and proudly hung. The sight of it adorning her living room wall touched off another round of hooking for Dorothy, a round of making pictures instead of rugs.

HAVING UPSET one tradition by using hookings to adorn walls, Mrs. Lawless proceeded to upset another tradition, the venerable old moss-covered one which says you can't eat your cake and have it, too. When interior decorator Lawless had hung the first artist Lawless canvas, business woman Lawless stepped in with a plan for retaining the pictures and at the same time getting revenue from them. This is done by selling not the picture itself, but only the right to reproduce it in a designated medium, such as for instance, a greeting card, or a magazine cover. Brown and Bigelow, St. Paul, Minnesota, bought rights to reproduce on Christmas cards the first Lawless picture and since have made similar use of a winter scene each year. Printed on each card is an explanation of how Mrs. Lawless made the picture. Western Family, a magazine, bought magazine publication rights for her latest picture—in connection with an article by author Lawless on how to hook pictures—and used it in color on a cover. Rights to reproduce other scenes on trays and screens and in various other ways have been sold elsewhere.

Complete publication rights have not been sold for any one picture but various partial rights for at least ten have yielded an average well into three figures. Hookings in the style of the old Currier and Ives prints are most in demand, and Mrs. Lawless also sells stamped patterns for some of these, at $3.95 to $4.95 each. As for the hooked pictures themselves, she steadfastly refuses to sell any of them, and says she will keep them to become family heirlooms.

THE FIRST step in making a hooked picture, Mrs. Lawless explains, is to select a design. One excellent way to begin is to copy an old print, or a fruit or flower design, or possibly a photograph of a home or landscape.

Medium weight natural color burlap two or three inches larger each way than the picture makes an ideal base. Monk's cloth also may be used. The hook needle should be about four inches long from hook to end of handle. The hooking frame snould be rectangular, and for a small picture, as large as the burlap. Adjustable frames, and easel frames, are obtainable, or a good frame can be made by any handy-man (or woman) of one-by-two sugar pine or other soft pine.

Closely woven cloth to be cut up for strips works best for a beginner who is making a picture. The cloth is usually discarded by the hooker's family, or obtained from friends. White or light-colored flannel is most sought after, because it is easy to dye. Sometimes the hooker may work in a half dozen shades of a color to give the elements of the picture the illusion of shape and depth. The shades are produced by varying the concentration of the dye solution, usually doubling the amount of dye to get the next darker shade. A garment often is found with just the color some hooker needs for a certain background or effect. Confirmed hookers haunt rummage sales in a perpetual search for such articles. Stranger things have happened, Mrs. Lawless vows, than for a real dyed-in-the-wool hooking fan to find herself walking down the street one day stalking some perfectly strange woman whose coat is exactly the shade she has been seeking for her new picture. About a half pound of cloth is usually enough to hook an area one foot square.

TO TRANSFER the design to the burlap, place the vellum over a print or design and trace its outlines with a pencil. Next lay the burlap on a table and spread carbon paper on it. Place the vellum over the carbon paper and pin it to the burlap so it will not shift about. With a pencil or some sharp instrument trace over the lines on the velum, pressing down hard enough to make carbon paper marks on the burlap. Remove the paper and carbon and trace the carbon lines with ink to make them permanent. Tack the burlap taut on the hooking frame. Cut some of the wool cloth into strips ³/32 to ¹/8 inch wide and straight with the grain of the cloth.

"For most beginners, this is the point of no return," Mrs. Lawless warns in mock seriousness. "Now the dreams come true—variegated cloth strips fall into a beautiful picture under the worker's hands. Here the hooking addict is made." Then with what might possibly be a crafty glint in her eye, she lists a few simple rules to hook the potential hooking addict:

Rest the hooking frame on the table edge, picture design face up. Begin hooking somewhere on the lower right-hand corner of the design (so as to work from right to left), in an area, if possible, which will not be shaded such as a roof or side of a building. With the hook handle in the right palm, thrust the point down through the burlap. With the left hand under the burlap hold a strip of the proper color and catch it over the hook. Pull one end of the strip up through the hole and adjust it to stand up a half inch. Now thrust the hook down again one hole to the left, and, catching the dangling strip, pull it up through the mesh into a loop between ¹/8 and ¼ inch high. Hook additional loops in adjoining meshes. Skip every third or fourth mesh as needed to prevent the finished work from bulging out. When the second end comes up, clip both ends even with the top of the loops. Now you are a hooker.

If this first hooking has been done in an area that is to become a building, outline it by hooking the next strips around the edges of doors, windows, roof, and similar details and then fill in the outlines. Study the print and note where highligbts and shadows call for lighter or darker shades of the color. Complete any figures before hooking around them, making them with very narrow strips and loops slightly higher, for clipping, which makes smoother blending. Pick out details where a thin black line may be used for accent.

Complete the design first, then fill in the background. Trim the burlap around the finished picture to leave an edge one inch wide. Fold this edge under once and sew to prevent fraying. Steam press the picture smooth by laying it face down, covering the reverse side with a wet muslin cloth and applying a hot iron. Mount the picture by tacking it to the back of its frame (no glass is used) and hang it on an appropriate wall.

THESE FEW directions, while enough in Dorothy's opinion to get anyone started hooking, comprise but a small part of the help available. Public and private classes in hooking abound.

On the actual making of hooked pictures, however, the literature is limited, so far as Dorothy knows, to her own articles and her book with its chapter on picture making ("Rug Hooking and Braiding," by Dorothy Lawless, $4.50, published by Studio-Crowell, New York.) The book gives detailed instructions on the designing, transferring, coloring, dyeing, hooking, finishing, and caring for hookings, as well as selling them and using them in home decorating.