Meeting Information
Meets on the third Saturday of every month, 10 am – 2 pm, at the Carolina Meadows Retirement Community, 100 Carolina Meadows, Chapel Hill, NC 27517. No meetings in July or August. For more details, contact a chapter officer or send an email to [email protected]
About us
Currently, PRH has 52 women and men members who hook in a broad range of styles and have a wide range of relative experience. We conduct two retreats a year: one at Caraway with a hired teacher and one at Trinity without a teacher. Annually, we promote the art of rug hooking in a booth at Carolina Fiber Festival held at the State Fairgrounds in Raleígh, NC for two days in March. We host one visiting teacher per year to do a selected project with the guild. Teachers within our guild mentor us in focused projects that enhance our hooking skills in areas such as color planning, dyeing, accessorizing, and finishing. Each year we feature one of our own members who describes her hooking history and shows her rugs. We also hold a silent auction in September, a holiday potluck and Yankee Swap, and an end-of-year potluck and rug show in June.
Rug hooking never grows old or gets boring. It remains fascinating and invites exploration. Interested people coming to this region are more than welcome to contact us and come visit our guild! We are a warm and welcoming group.
Chapter History
Our merry band of Piedmont Rug Hookers (PRHs) first began in September 1992, led by Ann Charles. She was excited to be learning the art form from Edith (Edie) Gerver, a newly arrived resident from Connecticut.
Fiber enthusiasts gathered as a non-ATHA group meeting in private homes on the third Saturday of each month September – June. In the early years, ladies from Southern Virginia were also part of our hooking clan. We would alternate meeting in NC and VA homes. Soon our membership numbers increased, and the driving time became cumbersome. We amicably decided to split our group with NC keeping the name Piedmont Rug Hookers and VA choosing Hookers and Strippers. The Piedmont region includes the geographical area between the North Carolina mountains to the west and the coastal plains in the east and our members come from across this area.
We are proud to have had up to six Certified McGown Instructors at a time in our guild. PRH became a busy guild. Increasingly, our activities took us outside our home meetings to demonstrate and teach the art of rug hooking. The showing of our rugs in public put them more at risk. We exposed children to rug hooking at a day long showing of our rugs at the Museum of History in Raleigh. We put on hooking demos and ‘show and tells’ at historic Heritage Days in Raleigh and Durham. These events required dressing up in period attire! These activities motivated us to review what ATHA offered and it was approved that PRH officially join. ATHA’s ability to provide insurance coverage for our meetings and events had become crucial.