About me
Tufting Stuff and Mattimat, what does it have to do with each other? Well, I'll tell you. Let me start at the beginning.
I was scrolling through my Facebook somewhat bored on a winter day in January 2021. Suddenly I saw something that caught my eye: someone was making a drawing of wool on a stretched canvas with a kind of sewing machine in their hand. It looked so cool! I was immediately curious. What was this thing?
I decided to search on Google first. But at the time, terms like 'making a rug' and 'shooting something into cloth with wool' didn't exactly get me very far. Yes, I got weaving and crocheting as examples, but the term tufting? I had to dig deep for that. It really wasn't that well-known in the Netherlands.
Tufting
Eventually I found out that the technique was called tufting and that there was also a webshop in the Netherlands that sold the stuff for it. I decided to go for it and bought everything I needed.
My boyfriend made me a frame and nailed the nail strips on it. Because of this he still hates those nasty strips to this day. Sorry Jeffrey!
He was also the one who taught me the tricks of tufting. As a concrete driller, he knew immediately how the tufting gun worked. I started like most beginners: too cautiously. Result? Tearing, wool falling out of the machine, fabric torn, you name it.
My boyfriend grabbed the tufting gun and said: “Look, this is how it works”. And yes. Straight lines, tight stitching, wool nicely through the cloth, as if he was a natural. He told me about the force you have to put on the tufting machine, how far you have to push the needle through the cloth and how you can put the lines at a constant speed. And soon I understood how it worked.
Mattimat
My first rug was a Pikachu. I was really into it and posted about it on my freshly-released Instagram page, which I was going to dedicate entirely to my new hobby: Mattimat. My name is Matti and I make rugs (which is English for mat). I thought it was a really nice name. Mattimat was born. Less than an hour later I received a message: “is your Pikachu for sale?” From that moment on I knew it wouldn’t stay a hobby. After Pikuchu was finished, I brought him to his new owner, where he still hangs on the wall.
Eclipse
I decided quite quickly to only make my own designs and to move away from the many tufted examples (nothing wrong with that of course!). I had just finished Eclipse, when I was approached by a prominent jury member of The A'Design Competition in Milan. He had seen my Eclipse wall hanging and it would be a perfect item for the Industrial Design category. He asked me to submit it as an item for this design competition. This had to be done within 3 days, because that was the deadline for submission.
I am always up for impulsive things, so I gave it a try. Above expectations I turned out to be within the percentage that was allowed to go to the preliminary finals. After a month I heard that I was Runner Up out of 120,000 participants and received a nice certificate.
This was a special moment and it gave me a lot of motivation and ambition to continue with it.
Tufting workshops
On February 1, 2022, I signed my KvK registration (chamber of commerce). Mattimat was born, the website went live and several tufted wall and floor coverings had already been delivered to customers.
Tufting became increasingly popular and I was often asked how to make such a rug. That quickly led to the idea of teaching tufting workshops. At a wool shop in the neighborhood I gave my first tufting workshop to a group of 6 girls. Their enthusiasm was infectious.
I decided to set up a studio at home as a workshop space and from then on I started giving rug tufting workshops at home.
Opening webshop
One thing led to another. "It's nice to tuft a rug, but what do you need if I want to tuft it myself at home?" I was asked questions like that regularly. I thought about it. The idea of having my own webshop had always seemed nice to me.
This is how the webshop tuftingstuff.com came to life. From a webshop with just a few products, it has now become a shop with over ninety different products, all related to tufting.
Mattimat and Tufting Stuff both originated from my passion for design and creating. I also love sharing it with others. Giving tufting workshops and teaching others the tricks of tufting is so much fun to do.
By the way, I still learn from others. It is a hobby that is so versatile, that there is always something to learn.