Colorful Making

From post-it notes and highlighter pens, to color-coded staff calendars, Nancy Schenk utilizes color to help organize her tasks as executive assistant to our president and CEO, Margaret Honey. At night, Nancy uses color in a more creative way – to create her traditional rug hooking projects.

For the past six years, Nancy has been creating rugs of various sizes using rug hooking, a traditional craft where rugs are made by pulling fabric, ribbons or yarn through a base such as burlap. One of the most important steps in the process is choosing the fabric to be used in the rug.

“You don’t know how the colors and patterns are going to turn out in the end,” said Nancy. “You can guess what it will look like, but until you actually work on the rug, you don’t really know. That’s one of the things I like about rug hooking.”

Nancy will display about a half dozen of her rug creations at this year’s World Maker Faire, a two-day event celebrating creativity and innovation in everything from knitting to robotics. Nancy’s rug hooking projects will be on display at our Science Technology Library and will include two rugs made from patterns that she designed herself.

World Maker Faire takes place at NYSCI on September 17 and 18. If you’re the forgetful type, write the date on a yellow post-it note and stick it on your fridge!