Rug Design Challenge Winners

Thank you so much to everyone for voting in the Annie Selke Rug Design Challenge. They decided to bring twelve rugs (rather than just the top 10) into production — which includes my quilt-inspired design!

The winning rugs are going on to become part of a capsule collection for Annie Selke’s Dash & Albert, and the goal is to introduce them at High Point Market next spring. I understand creating finished products for printed goods from my experience in running the stationery line, but I’m curious about how it plays out for rugs. Textile materials and finishing techniques are details that I pay attention to when buying, and now I get to learn about that from the production side (and share everything with you along the way)!

You can see the clear quilting inspiration. Those triangles are a classic element (popping up again lately in cement tiles, too). I created each of the elements in Illustrator, starting with the floral border based on a block unit, and then using that block to determine widths for the rest. I worked on adjusting border sizes and proportions, and then finished by filling the center field with the quilt pattern. There are actually three colors here, the cream and then both brown and black, giving it a subtle depth. It would still work well in just two colors though, and if it were flatwoven that would make it reversible, so this is all of the stuff I’m excited to learn about as we move forward!

I know a lot of you were excited about the bug designs. I was too, but I knew they were a risk going into this. The people that liked them really liked them. I really liked them! They did well in the voting process, but unfortunately not quite well enough to make the cut.

The exercise of drawing and turning that into a workable pattern was so enjoyable though! I’ve always returned to art and design again and again, and this challenge reawakened that in me, so I’m super thankful for that. (And I have a million more ideas I want to make real now!)

I’m also excited to know that people will be able to decorate their homes with a rug that I designed. That’s an honor, and I didn’t realize how much it would mean to me until I started working on these. Thank you, thank you, thank you for all of your support. I’m over the moon today!