It was 2015 when Wanda Elliott began rug hooking—or “matting,” as her mother called it. She had just retired from a successful career teaching kindergarten and grade one. “When I went home that summer after retiring, I hooked my first little mat – an 8 x 8 of a house that a friend drew for me – and I’ve been doing it ever since.” Elliott speaks with a light accent, a gentle lilt that is unmistakably Newfoundland—softened, but not dimmed, by her years on the mainland.
We’re speaking in Elliott’s studio—a small, sun-drenched room on the second floor of the century home she shares with her husband Garry and their dog, Mojo. “This is my space, my little nook. I spend a lot of time in here, especially in the winter.” There’s a sense that Elliott’s art offers solace, just as her studio serves as a refuge. “I get lost in it,” she says. “Sometimes I think it keeps me sane.”
The studio is barely large enough for Elliott and the dog, but she is far from alone. In fact, she maintains a remarkably social craft life—perhaps an echo of the close-knit Newfoundland culture in which she was raised. “I’m up here by myself, but I’m hardly ever alone. I’m either doing a course, or doing Zooms with Deanne (Fitzpatrick from Amherst, Nova Scotia – Elliott’s instructor and mentor), or I’m on FaceTime hooking with Bonnie or Rowena”—two of a group of half a dozen lifelong friends. “We started school together and finished school together, and we’re just as good friends now as we were in high school.”
Elliott’s discovery of hooking in retirement marks both a return to family tradition—her mother, aunt, grandmother, and great-aunt were all rug makers—and a reconnection to a craft deeply rooted in Newfoundland history. In northern communities, hooked rugs were not only a source of warmth but also a form of trade. Elliott recalls her great-aunt Delphy, working in the kitchen—“because it was the only room with heat – that’s where the stove was!”—hooking rugs for the Grenfell Mission, a medical facility established in the late 1800s by Sir Wilfred Grenfell. Finished rugs were exchanged for essential goods and supplies. “The women all used the same patterns, and they’re very recognizable: dog teams, children playing with Grenfell coats on, seal, whales, icebergs.”
Winter appears often in Elliott’s work, but water is her most enduring theme. Her first major exhibition, Gotta get back to the water, was held at Trenton’s These 4 Walls gallery in April 2024. Curator Brandy Calvert Ringelmann recalls her reaction: “I was knocked off my feet. It was shocking how interesting it was. I told her, ‘People need to see this!’” The exhibition featured a wide range of seascapes—lighthouses, gulls over water, fishing dories, children on the beach—reflecting how Elliott experiences the island. “Take the Trans-Canada Highway: it’s just a paved road with trees on both sides. There's nothing to see, right? You’ve got to get off the main road and get down to the bays and the inlets.” She pauses, then describes a recent piece: “I’m walking with the waves,” she says, before adding simply, “There’s always water. Always water.”
Family threads through all of Elliott’s work, as it has from the beginning. “One of the first patterns I hooked on my own was one Dad drew of a dog team. When it was done it was in Mom’s room at the retirement home. And it was hooked on a frame that came from Mom’s family back in the day.”
And where there is family, there is home. Though she has lived happily in Madoc for nearly 35 years, Elliott is clear: “Newfoundland is home,” she says. “Always will be.”
This article was previously published in the Fall 2026 Vol. 35 No. 1 issue of Umbrella.
Photo Credit: Wanda Elliott
