Butler Hooking Frame

Someone on Rughookers has been looking for Butler frames, so I thought I would share photos of mine. I have kept it out in my unfinished studio/barn all winter and have missed using it. It's really too big to leave it set up in my mother's dining room, so I've been using a Puritan on a floor stand - something that can be shoved off into a corner. The hooking space on this Butler frame is about twice as big as the Puritan.

The frame folds down,

and the floor supports fold up,

so the frame can be transported on it's wheels. There's a comfortable wooden handle for pulling. When I pull it in and out of hotels, I usually pile my hooking bags on top of the floor supports and use the whole thing like a cart. I really love this frame. The only faults I find with it are 1) the size for fitting into my mother's dining room - old houses tend to have smaller rooms, so it would also be too large for my own dining room, but it's just perfect in any of my studio spaces, and 2) I can't twist and turn it the way I can the Puritan when I want to hook in different directions - so, it makes me do what my old teacher always said I should do, learn to hook in all directions without moving my pattern - or, I can easily take the pattern off of the frame and turn it.

So, that's the Butler. The following photo is my sneaky Blue - loving to lay on the rug on the forbidden love seat while I'm so involved in hooking I don't notice.