Seated at the floor loom purchased by her mother Rose in the 1960s, Gardner moves the shuttle back and forth across the threads or warp. There’s a rhythm to this time-honored craft as the patterns emerge.

The materials she uses for her rugs might come from old sheets, fabrics from tag or yard sales, or even pieces of old blue jeans. There are no set patterns that are charted to show how the rugs will turn out, although Gardner’s work displays an artistic mix of colors.

In preparation for the weaving, Gardner explained that the fabric is cut into 2-inch strips and then sewn together to be wound around the shuttle. This fabric, which can be any color or pattern, is called the weft.

“I mix up the light and dark colors and the denim,” she said, adding that a lot of her other materials are sheets.

Not one to let anything go to waste, Gardner, who also helps make quilts at her church, will bring home the strips of fabric left over from those projects to make what she calls a hit-or-miss rug.

“It’s a piece of this or a piece of that, anywhere from about 6 inches to 18 inches,” she said.

“That’s what they did years ago, They used their old clothing and cut them into strips and made the rugs out of them,” she explained.

When her mother was living, Gardner never made a rug in fact she did not touch her mom’s loom unless her mom needed assistance.

“That was her loom — that was hers. She would get herself in a jam — something would break or she’d get her work tangled up — I’d fix that for her, but that was hers,” she said.

Up to three years before she passed away in 2005 at the age of 91, Gardner’s mother was weaving rugs. There was still a part of a rug, which her mom had started, on the loom at the time of her death. Gardner said that she eventually finished it.

“It was August of the next year before I could bring myself to come down and do anything,” she admitted.

Because of the set up of her loom, Gardner can make a rug fairly quickly. The spools of thread that form the warp are located on a rack in front of her loom, so it’s a continuous feed.

“If I had to do all the cutting and sewing — everything — it would be three to four hours to make a rug. If I did it all,” she said.

Her boyfriend has taken on the job of cutting the fabric into strips and sewing them together to form the weft. Her workspace in the basement is lined with storage bins filled with the fabric strips, sorted by colors like an artist’s paint box, ready to be woven into the rugs.

Through a relative that visited Ocracoke Island in North Carolina, Gardner has been able to find a market for her rugs at a shop there, apart from selling her work locally.

All total, Gardner estimates that she had made over 1,600 rugs.

When her mother first purchased the loom, which is about four feet wide, there was an outside entrance to the lower level of the home where Gardner lives. Now, after some remodeling, there is no way to relocate the loom except to take it apart and move it in pieces.

Gardner, who has lived at Bodines for most of her life, is considering moving away from this little village.

Of course the loom will travel with her to wherever she goes — it will just take a little ingenuity to move it.