3 Designing Women

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MEG LITTLE l Rug Designer
On the Spot, Middletown

There’s something thrilling about the way Meg Little’s color-packed patterns of dots, spirals, rings and geometric swirls evoke spacely orbits. She fashions these future antiques — rugs, cushions and doormats — in an airy studio housed in an old converted barn. The technique she uses is hand tufting, and her work area consists of several large wooden frames, multiple pulleys, a tufter and a collection of colored yarn that weighs in at an amazing 3,500 pounds. Like oil paintings, her creations have names that capture their essence: Bone Shards, Desert Stratum, Mossy Beads, Dark Here Below, Wafers. Unlike weaving, a former pastime for Little, her rugs are more akin to drawing or painting, and prices are comparable to works of art: from $540 for a small doormat to $36,000 for a room-size carpet. “You start where you want to start, and go where you want to go,” she says. Little has had a passion for rug making for decades. Wisely, she lets her heart lead. “It took me awhile to get brave enough to keep making what interested me. But I discovered in the process, that if I stay true to myself, I could still make a living making art, and that’s immensely satisfying.” www.meglittle.com