Made in NC: Crow Hill Rugs

When Carol Blackmore was five, she fell in love with weaving.

Her grandma had done a lot of weaving when Blackmore was a child. And when she contracted Lyme disease at 15, weaving became an enormous part of her life.

“I was able to do it even when I wasn’t really thinking all that well or processing information as well,” she said.

Blackmore has continued to weave throughout the ups and downs in her life – all the way to opening Crow Hill Rugs, her Chapel Hill home-based business.

When Blackmore was pregnant with her first child, she decided to start the part-time rug weaving business.

“It allowed me to incorporate the kids,” she said. “I didn’t have to go anywhere, and they could help with all the tearing and cutting of fabrics.”

In 1994, she transitioned to the loom she uses now, a 10-foot wide Swedish Glimakra Sovereign. Blackmore made a few modifications to make it better, so she started making rugs as big as 8-by-12 feet, since 1996.

Blackmore uses a lot of different fabrics: recycled materials, old clothes people leave on her porch for her to use, or things she finds at the thrift store. She said she is known for her color combinations.

“I do custom which is pretty unusual,” she said. “It’s very time consuming, but it’s my social life. It gets me out talking with people, and I get to know people pretty well.”

She says the rugs are also a personal thing.

“Somehow there’s a lot of emotion that I can inject into the color of the rugs, and people have very strong feelings about them,” she said.

“I aim to combine colors in ways that convey emotion,” she said. Because I sell my rugs directly, I get to see the emotional impact that they have. Shoppers often tell me that, even though they are not ready to purchase a rug, they love looking at them.”

When Blackmore visited her daughter in Nicaragua where she was serving as a Peace Corps volunteer, she felt compelled to create a project that could generate income for parents to send their children to school.

“We thought, well, for one thing, the women really might like something to do with their hands, something to do with each other, something to do with a little bit of free time,” she said.

Blackmore and her daughter, Ivy, started a rug-weaving project called Nica Tejidos, and it is currently operating in El Ocotal, Nicaragua.

Blackmore said she wants to do more painting and drawing now, and has started selling cards at the Carrboro Farmers Market where she already sells her rugs. You can find Crow Hill Rugs at the Carrboro Farmers Market or online at crowhillrugs.com.

By Britney Nguyen