Color, Creativity Combine at DiFranza Designs

It's cozy, it's warm, it's a treasure trove in a historic Currier & Ives-like setting, where Happy and Steve DiFranza bring art to life in the 21st century.

DiFranza Designs, located at 25 Bow St., is situated in an inviting and colorfully appointed colonial studio and displays rug hooking patterns, finished samples galore, and swatches of hand-dyed wool in a large variety of colors.

You may find a medley of patterns, or perhaps an intriguing brick cover sample, displayed on the spacious rectangular table set beneath the studio's large, naturally lit front window.

Within its catalog featuring innumerable fine designs and extensive "how-to" information is DiFranza's Designs' popular "cat" series, which has merited serious attention and continued repeat business. Custom designs are a specialty, as well, and those interested are encouraged to inquire. 

Settling on Elm Street in 1959, Happy DiFranza began her cottage industry while husband Steve was working in Boston, following the birth of their first child, Elizabeth.

DiFranza began taking rug hooking classes from North Reading resident Ethel Bruce at evening sessions held at  She hooked several rugs before asking her husband to design a rug for baby Elizabeth. The Alice in Wonderland Rug was thus created.

When her instructor suggested that the rug design be sold to a patternmaker, DiFranza decided she and her husband should try to market it themselves. That was the beginning of DiFranza Designs. 

Elizabeth, now an adult, is a designer in her own right. As a hobby, she creates patterns for knitting in addition to hooking rugs. Her sister, Suzanne, also is accomplished in the art of rug hooking and has completed works for friends and family.

DiFranza Designs moved in 1972, along with the family, to its present home on Bow Street, in the midst of the town's Historic District.

Chairwoman for a number of years now of the Historic District Commission, which encompasses nine buildings in her neighborhood, Happy DiFranza also is a member of the North Reading Historical Society and Antiquarian Society.

A graduate of Smith College with a bachelor's in art history, DiFranza studied drawing, design and printmaking at the Boston Museum School, where she met husband, Steve. 

Her work has been featured in American Home Crafts, Time-Life Books, and Rug Hooking Magazine. In 1991, Stackpole Books asked the couple to write a book about rug hooking. Hooking Fine Gifts was published in 1992, and designs from this book were featured in Good Housekeeping Magazine and many other publications. 

In addition, DiFranza worked on the exhibition "Walking on Art," held at the National Heritage Museum in Lexington, and co-authored an article with then-Assistant Museum Director Barbara Franco, detailing the history of rug hooking in America. The article, based on historical information uncovered from the exhibition, was published in October 1990 in The Magazine Antiques. 

In 1997, her husband designed the 5-foot-by-9-foot panel, which she hooked for the Flint Memorial Library. An instructor in the art of rug hooking at her studio, she has also taught workshops in greater New England, Florida and Kansas.

Steve DiFranza is a graduate of the former Vesper George School of Art in Boston. Following a stint in the Korean War with the U.S. Army Signal Corps, he graduated from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, with a dual major in graphic design and painting.

A former instructor of drawing and design at the school while employed as a Boston advertising agency art director, DiFranza also has created a series of 4x8 panels for Christ Church's North Chapel in Andover.

His paintings often have been exhibited at Flint Memorial Library, as well as with the American Federation of Art, The Boston Arts Festival, the Museum of Fine Arts, and in private collections in the United States and Europe.

For 25 years, DiFranza has offered his time and graphic arts expertise to produce flyers for Flint Memorial Library. Likewise, throughout the years he provided posters for North Reading High School's Masquers Club. These works hang on the walls throughout the school's auditorium.

Recently, he passed along this project to the school's art students, noting that "there are actors in the theater, there are stage hands, and there also are graphic designers."

Since retiring in 1992, DiFranza has been pursuing his painting and assisting his wife with her rug hooking business.

When asked about their most unusual customer request, there was little hesitation as the couple cited -- each with a broad smile -- two somewhat related inquiries from two separate sources. One involved a request to create a large, almost half-scale, custom rug pattern replica of the customer's Harley-Davidson motorcycle, which DiFranza Designs completed.

The second request was also by a motorcyclist, who knocked on the studio door one day to see if he could have a special design painted on the back of his motorcycle jacket. Steve accommodated utilizing an oil medium, and the cyclist was most pleased. He returned a year or so later for a "touch-up." In fact, DiFranza mentioned that not long ago he received a call from a woman reporting that she had found her "[late] father's custom motorcycle jacket hanging in the closet." 

Although rug hooking has experienced a decline in popularity, particularly due to the absence of suppliers these days, Happy DiFranza noted that there is presently a "slight uptick" in the sale of kits, which are often used by beginners. That means good news to the couple, as they see their passion for design and the art of rug hooking passed on to new generations.