Madeline Ronzoni has a gun in her hand. In a TikTok with over 70,000 views, the 26-year-old is using a tufting gun to turn Hollander’s hockey jersey from Heated Rivalry into a detailed rug. Since 2020, Ronzoni has amassed over one million TikTok followers for her DIY rug content. Known as “Happy Rugs” on social media, Ronzoni specializes in bright, fun, pop culture inspired designs, like boba tea, sneakers, and Labubus. Completely self-taught, Ronzoni has grown her passion into a business, offering custom rugs and partnering with Rugs.com to sell her designs worldwide. BUST chatted with Ronzoni to find out more about her journey and process.
BUST: What drew you to making rugs, and how did you get started?
Madeline Ronzoni: During the pandemic I came across a video on Tiktok of punch needle embroidery, and I was immediately intrigued, so I got all the supplies to make it—a punch needle, monk’s cloth, and all the supplies to build my frame with the help of my boyfriend, now husband. Honestly, it felt like something that I was like missing from my life, and something that I was meant to do.
I was a marketing student in college, and I gravitated toward advertising, brand-building, and design, but I always felt like I was meant to do something creative with my hands. I decided to share my work on Tiktok, and it gained so much traction because people were so wowed by it. So I invested in a tufting gun, which felt like a huge jump at the time, but I wanted to make rugs at a larger scale, make more content, make them a faster scale, and experiment with more rugs in unusual shapes and different designs.
Tell me about the name Happy Rugs.
Naming the brand Happy Rugs was very intentional. The mission behind my videos, my rugs, and my business is to spread happiness and joy through my work. Discovering rug making truly brought me joy that I had never found or experienced before, and from the minute I started sharing my work, I knew that I wanted to extend that feeling to others through the screen.
My goal is to facilitate a creative, inspirational, and joyful experience for anyone who watches my content, enjoys my rugs, or is inspired to try rug making themselves. I’m especially proud of the community that has grown around Happy Rugs. The way people in the comments are always supportive, genuinely kind, and feel inspired to try tufting is exactly what excited me to share my passion in the first place.
Walk us through the basic overview of what the process is like and the materials you use.
We built all my frames that I have. I have lots of yarn. I love using New Zealand wool, but it’s very expensive. A lot of the yarn you see me use in videos is acrylic yarn from craft stores. I have a bunch of different tufting guns from Tuft the World. I have some that create longer piles or loops, and those are really fun to experiment with.
I create the design on my iPad or computer, and I use a projector to project it onto my frame with the cloth stretched out. Then I feed the yard through my gun, and once I finish tufting, I back the rug with glue and cloth,bind the edges, shave the rug, and finally carve the rug.
Where do you find inspiration?
Definitely in everyday objects. I love just the wow factor from bringing something that I use or see in my everyday life and making it into a rug. It’s like magic to me. I also love creating my own original designs, and that’s usually something colorful, girly, whimsical, probably something with flowers. My goal is always to bring out my inner child, so I’m always thinking of what I loved growing up, and just bringing my inner child out through the rugs, because I feel like that’s what fulfills me the most and brings me the most joy.
You recently have outsourced production due to the demand that you experienced. How does that process work?
Right now, I actually have a partnership line with Rugs.com. They’re a family owned company based in South Carolina. We launched a collection with them to the public in May of 2025. You can purchase my original tufted designs—the funky flowers, the fruit salad, boba tea, a lot of the same designs that are on my website. They’re able to provide them at a much larger scale and a more attainable price point.
It’s been so amazing to partner with a company who can produce at such a larger scale and be able to offer better price points for my customers so we are able to offer new kinds of rugs, like jute, instead of just tufted.
How has your work changed since you first started, and how have you changed as an artist?
It has so drastically improved over the years. I’m fully self taught, and I had no idea what I was doing when I first started. I just learned as I went. I definitely picked up some new techniques and skills along the way. My goals have also changed. I want to feel more fulfilled in the rugs that I’m making, so I shifted to creating my own original designs. The first year or two, I relied heavily on custom commissions for income, so I would be making rug designs that I didn’t necessarily love. But now, as a full time creator, I have the authority to choose what I want to make, whether it’s for organic content, just for fun, or accepting certain projects and commissions.
How would you suggest someone who’s interested in tufting get started?
Start with punch needle embroidery. It’s very inexpensive. I think I got my punch needle for $5, and the end result is always just as fulfilling, if not even more, because there’s more time spent in it, and you can use a punch needle while sitting on the couch watching TV, and it’s nice and relaxing, which is not something you can do with the loud, heavy tufting gun.
You can decide to invest in the tufting gun, and you can still use the same materials that you bought for the punch needle. Also there are more tufting stores popping up in cities where you can try tufting and make a rug for yourself to see if it’s something you really enjoy.
More Tuftfluencers to Follow
Simji
Author of Rug Tufting with SIMJI, social media influencer SIMJI creates rugs and tufted bags inspired by pop culture and food. She has even partnered with some major brands, including Coca Cola and Marvel. The content creator learned tufting as a way to gain followers, and that move paid off — She now has 1 million followers on Instagram and 8.1 million followers on TikTok.
@simjiofficial on Instagram
@simjiofficial on TikTok
Jessie James
Rug maker Jessie James of Studio Tuft creates functional art from her studio in Stroud, Gloucestershire. Her designs reflect Bauhaus and mid-century influences and feature vibrant hues, and her hand-made rugs are available to purchase from her website, studiotuft.com. “I use sustainability sourced rug wools, the rugs have a super dense pile and are so lovely to stand on,” says James. “I love designing and making, I like to think of the rugs as art for the floor.”
@studiotuft on Instagram
@studiotuft on TikTok
Trish Andersen
Fiber artist Trish Andersen takes a painterly approach to tufting—her tufting gun standing in for a paintbrush and yarn in lieu of paint. “I often liken tufting more to painting or drawing than to traditional textile processes,” Andersen says. “Unlike linear methods like weaving or knitting that build row by row, tufting offers the freedom to move intuitively across the frame. That sense of movement and spontaneity makes me feel truly alive.”
@trishandersenart on Instagram
Caroline Kaufman
Brooklyn-based designer and textile artist Caroline Kaufman brings her dreamy abstract art to life with her tufting gun. Her experimental textiles celebrate pattern and movement in unexpected ways, almost like doodles in rug form. Informed by her work as a painter, Kaufman’s rugs are both artistic and functional.
@carolinekaufman on Instagram
