Working from twenty years' experience as a rug hooker, studio owner, and teacher, Deanne Fitzpatrick shares her sources of inspiration, work habits, ideas about creativity and design, and helpful guidelines for creating beautiful, expressive rugs. Practical suggestions for hooking houses, landscapes, seasons, stories, and people are accompanied by the artist's insight into tapping creativity and learning how to make art from life. Tips for choosing colours, experimenting with texture, preparing a backing, transferring a design, and achieving realistic depictions are interspersed with passages on artistic inspiration and process. Best of all, over 80 striking colour photographs of the author's own projects and techniques provide readers with excellent reference points for turning their own experiences into magnificent rugs.