Designing a Rug

I've been designing this week!  I mentioned here not long ago that the wonderful folks at Rockland Industries have asked me to design a rug for them using Roc-Lon Multi-Purpose Cloth.  I'm usually the type to jump in full force.  But for once in my life, I decided to take baby steps through this process.

So I cut a small piece of MPC to make a sample.  I have some 8" letter stencils.  I traced letters on the MPC so that they touch each other and aligned them in different directions.  Then I used acrylics to paint the negative space around the letters.  I'm liking the way this looks.  Where did I get the inspiration?

...from this painting.

This was in a gallery in Greenville, SC.  It reminded me of letters  in white with the background painted, but a bit more abstract.  We didn't buy this painting, but we did buy another on by the same artist.  I'll share it soon and tell more about the artist - an interesting fellow.