By Natasha Anderson
When Dianne Ellis, from Robbinsville, needed a rug for her living room she simply braided one. That was in 1991 and the rug is still on her floor today. Since then she has made more than two thousand rugs.
Dianne Ellis, artist
“I do it for the love of doing it,” she says. “When I am braiding, I can be in my own little world and forget about the people around me or the troubles around me.”
Ellis takes her braiding stand with her wherever she goes and works while in waiting rooms or anywhere else she finds herself idle. She typically braids about ten hours each day. After an accident in April left her with a badly broken leg that required two surgeries and a lengthy recovery, she began completing a rug every three days. “It’s what has kept me sane,” she says.
When creating custom rugs, Ellis encourages clients to send her paint swatches of colors they like. She then matches those colors as closely as possible to wool samples, often adding other colors as accents. Once the color scheme is selected, she cuts the wool fabric into strips and begins braiding. A nine-foot by twelve-foot rug takes around 300 hours to complete. The largest rug she has made was eleven feet by sixteen feet and included 70 colors.
Ellis is active in Dogwood Crafters, a craft cooperative in Dillsboro, and currently serves as its president. She teaches at John C. Campbell Folk School and for several Cooperative Extension groups.
“I want to share this craft because it is a dying art,” says Ellis. “If I can get people to keep rug braiding going, then I will have succeeded in what I want to accomplish in my life.”
Ellis’s rugs can be purchased at Dogwood Crafters, at 90 Webster Street, in Dillsboro, and at The Knotty Lady, at 1738 Lower Stecoah Road, Robbinsville.
