Norwich TikTok tufting champion is teaching rug-making skills to millions of people
Watch Raveena Ghattaura's report for ITV News Anglia
A TikTok "tufter" has embarked on a new career - after her videos of the rug-making art clocked up millions of views online.
Jamie Hoang said tufting first caught her attention while she was bored during lockdown, but she is now moving into business premises and teaching others about the decorative technique.
Tufting is technique for making soft, fluffy rugs using a special gun which rapidly shoots a needle into fabric. The art has recently become popular on the social media site TikTok with many rug-makers posting videos of their work.
"I was actually scrolling through TikTok and I was like: I’ve never seen this before," said the 29-year-old from Norwich. "So that’s when I started doing it by hand, and then I bought a gun.
"I put my first video on TikTok and that got 100,000 views in a day and then I carried on with it."
Ms Hoang's work has proved so popular that she has been able to turn her hobby into a full-time job, renting a small studio in Norwich.
She said: "It’s not until someone asked me if I do workshops or if I teach that I thought 'why not'? I rented this place at a risk. I had no idea what I was getting myself into.
"I posted on TikTok and that’s when the enquiries started coming in. I got 350,000 views in two or three days. People are coming from London, Brighton, Sheffield, all over."
In fact the business is going so well, Ms Hoang is now looking to expand.
"This place is great but it can only fit five people," she said. "I want a bigger venue so I can have more than 10 people at a time."
Her skill at rug-making has not come as a surprise to her mum and recently Ms Hoang has discovered that it is family tradition.
She said: "In the 70s in Vietnam, from the age of 14 to 18, my mum was making rugs, but by hand - but I didn’t know this until about two months ago!"