What is rug-tufting? Fiber arts studio opens in downtown Xenia

The entrepreneurial trio are also planning a boba tea shop next door, with the ultimate goal of having a contiguous place where people can work, play, or just be.

“The bigger umbrella is, ‘Let’s build a space where people can come in, have face-to-face interaction, have conversation.’ And a lot of times we need an excuse to do that,” Buchanan said.

To make a rug, patrons can come in with a design of their choice, and then draw that design onto a stretched canvas using a projector. They then use a tufting gun to push yarn through the backing canvas, “coloring in” the rug.

“It’s super, super accessible. It’s very easy,” Buchanan said. “I think the misconception would be like, ‘Oh, I’m not artistic,’ or ‘I’m not creative.’ And it’s like, can you draw in a coloring book? It’s maybe a little more difficult than coloring in a coloring book, but not that much.”

Once the rugs are tufted, a felt adhesive backing is applied to the rug, the edges are touched up, and the rug is finished.

Common Thread originally began as a hobby. Buchanan and a friend originally tried pottery, but found few options close to home.

“We’d have to rent space, and it was just a whole process,” he said. “So we looked into tufting and it was like, ‘Oh, well, if we just got a tufting gun and built our own little frame, we could just do this craft and we don’t need a kiln and all this other stuff.”

The pair set up shop in Buchanan’s garage, and soon began hosting their friends who wanted to learn tufting as well.

“What that showed me was there was actually a lot of interest in not only the tufting, but people would come...and they would just sit and hang out. And we’d have some wine and drinks and food, and we’d just like hang out for hours,” Buchanan said.

Buchanan, who is originally from Canada and has a background in counseling, said community and connection is the point.

“I think there’s a desire. I also think it’s a need,” he said. “I think we’re in a weird time in history where we can spend more time alone, and connected but not connected. There’s something really important about face-to-face interaction that I’m pretty passionate about.”