An original design starts with input from you.  Tell me about your dining room, kitchen or living room.  Tell me about your lifestyle; your kids, your dogs, your hobbies.  What are the colors you like to decorate your house with most?  Is your house Colonial?  Primitive?  Country?  Rustic?  Armed with this kind of information, photographs, magazine clippings and anything else that you think will help me understand you, I go to work preparing a full-color, to-scale rendering of your floorcloth.  You will receive the drawing (in some cases more than one, depending on the complexity of the project), a quoted price for the piece and an estimate of the completion date.  I encourage my clients to take as much time as is needed to decide what design will work best for them.  I can make adjustments in color and / or design or I can start over with a new concept.  Once a design is settled upon, a Commission Agreement is signed and with a deposit of 30% of the completed price, work will begin on your floorcloth.  The end product - a piece of art unique to you and your surroundings; a floorcloth that will enhance your home for years to come.

Frequently Asked Questions

THE DESIGN PROCESS

Are each of your floorcloths custom designs and one of a kind?

I rarely make two floorcloths which are identical. Customers tell me the style they like, colors they need and the size which will work best for their situation, then I go to work designing a piece which will fit perfectly into their home. For the smaller floorcloths, I will repeat a design, especially if it works particularly well as a folk art piece.

Tell us about your designs.

The designs I have painted on floorcloths range from whimsical frogs wearing hats to historical reproductions of stencil designs and everything in between. Most of my floorcloths use a historical palette of colors and incorporate detailed border designs. Some examples:

Angel Moose in a Pine Tree	Checks with Dancing Bears	Mariner's Compass	Bordered Pineapples	Stenciled Stars and Checks
Basic Checkered Boards (lots of them...)	Tulip Vase	Vermont Farm Scenes	Portraits of Historic Buildings	Fruit Vase

What is your most interesting story?

One of my most labor-intensive projects was for a home in Weston, Vermont. I met with the customer and she showed me the space in the master bedroom where she wanted the floorcloth. We figured that an octagon shape would work the best and she told me that she wanted the village of Weston to be portrayed. I took several pictures of scenes around the village green and other notable Weston landmarks. Back in the studio I painted small watercolor sketches of these places and used the computer to arrange them around the border of the octagon. The center image shows the customer’s home behind the green’s bandstand. The border has 8 scenes from around the town. The finished piece is six and a half feet in diameter and looks wonderful in the bedroom of that beautiful colonial home. Unusual themes? Almost every floorcloth is for a specific place. I rarely make a floorcloth that seems "usual".

Do you like to incorporate nature and country themes into your floorcloths?

My goal in creating each floorcloth is to evoke a sense of peace and tranquility. Even basic checkerboards have that rhythm which seems to settle jangled nerves. The colors I use are from a natural palette- warm golds, soft, mossy greens, rusty reds, sky blue and creamy ivory are my favorites. I love recreating old farmscenes and landscapes which incorporate old buildings and lots of cows, horses and dogs. I often add borders with little quotes or sayings (like "Farmhouse Bright with Harvest Light").

What do customers provide?

Customers usually come to me from having seen my work at a show, in someone’s house or from my web site. They know they want one of these tough, washable rugs and they usually know exactly where they want it- under the kitchen table, in the dining room, in front of the couch in the family room or in the front entryway, for example. They are encouraged to send me photos of the room, paint chips, swatches from curtain fabric or wallpaper and magazine clippings to indicate their general taste in color and design.

I make floorcloths in all sizes. Small kitchen sink ones are as small as 20" x 40" , runners for hallways can go up to 16 feet long and beyond. My heavyweight canvas is 10 feet wide, but with a seam I can expand that size. The floorcloths over 10’ X 15’ have to be made in my barn, where there’s more floor space.

How do you use your computer?

Depending on the type of design, I use the computer in several different ways. For painterly designs, I will do a small watercolor, guache or acrylic painting and scan it in to the computer then manipulate the design and colors, add a border and fit it to scale. For geometric pieces I use a graphics program to make accurate patterns, play with the colors and work out the scale. I can then printout individual sections at full scale to puzzle-piece the design together. I also use the computer to try several different types of designs and to give customers several choices for one project.

The computer is such a great tool; I use it in a variety of ways. To transfer details, I can print them out full size and just carbon-paper transfer them to the canvas. For stencils and stamps I print motifs at full scale and cut my own stencils directly from the printouts.

Do you use precut stencils or stamps?

I always cut my own stamps and stencils. This allows me to make them to any size and work into the geometry of the design. Designing is my forte. I love creating repeating patterns and stamps and stencils are an essential ingredient for that process.

For more interesting FAQ's, see About Canvasworks and the FAQ/Care Pages.