Huggins is a Zentangle®-original tangle pattern from co-founders Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas.
It is one of several tangles resembling weaving that are great fun to draw.
A variant of Huggins is W2 (Warp and Weft), drawn using squares instead of the dots of the first step, connected with straight lines instead of curved ones.
CZT Vicki Murray’s site with the instructions for drawing Huggins no longer exists. For your convenience, here is my illustration of the steps.
When you draw your initial dots in Step 1 larger than what I’ve shown here, it creates a more open weave. Shading adds the final touch to achieve the 3D woven effect.
Image copyright the artist and used with permission, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Please feel free to refer to the step outs to recreate this tangle in your Zentangles and ZIAs, or link back to this page. However the artist and TanglePatterns.com reserve all rights to these images and they should not be pinned, reproduced or republished. Thank you for respecting these rights.
UPDATE December 15, 2016 – In a blog post for the last day of their “12 Days of 3Zs”, Rick and Maria post the steps to another way of tangling Huggins they’ve named Crazy Huggins.
UPDATE November 11, 2017 – Project Pack #01. In this this video (28:14) Molly demonstrates Crazy Huggins using White Sakura Gelly Roll Pens on a black Apprentice Zentangle tile. She includes the tangles Shattuck and Crazy ‘Nzeppel to fill the Huggins shapes.
UPDATE December 8, 2018 – Project Pack #04. As part of the Twelve Days of Zentangle, 2018 Edition series, in this Day 6 video starting at (14:33) Maria’s daughter CZT Martha Huggins demonstrates how to tangle and shade her namesake Huggins.
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UPDATE July 22, 2020 – Project Pack #10. As part of The Legend of Zentangle project pack series, Julie Willand demonstrates how to tangle Crazy Huggins at 17:04.
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UPDATE July 24, 2020 – Project Pack #10. As part of The Legend of Zentangle project pack series, Martha tangles Huggins at 46:46.
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UPDATE July 26, 2020 – Project Pack #10. As part of The Legend of Zentangle project pack series, starting at 02:14 Maria shows her tile combining Doodah, Mooka, and Huggins.
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UPDATE December 12, 2020 – Project Pack #12. As part of the 12 Days of Zentangle, 2020 Zentangle Renaissance project pack, Martha tangles Huggins on a Renaissance tan tile.
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UPDATE December 13, 2021 – Project Pack #16. As part of the 12 Days of Zentangle – Keeping Score project pack, Julie tangles Crazy Huggins on a square white Zentangle tile.
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UPDATE December 14, 2022 – Project Pack #19. As part of the Twelve Days of Zentangle, 2022 Edition project pack, Rick tangles Cadent and Huggins in this video:
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UPDATE May 20, 2023 – As part of Zentangle’s 21-day challenge honoring May’s Mental Health Awareness month, Day 10’s Bijouism is Reflect and Rick tangles Huggins in this 16:30 minute limited-audio video.
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UPDATE March 17, 2024 – Project Pack #23. As part of the Birth of the Zentangle Method project pack, Martha tangles Funls (aka “Puppy Huggins”) in the Day 2 video shown here.
Check out the tag zentangle for more Zentangle®-original tangles on TanglePatterns.com.
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Related Links
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- Linda's List of Zentangle-Original Patterns — here is the complete list of original tangles (aka "official tangles") created and introduced by founders Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas, including those not published online. If you are new to the Zentangle Method I highly recommend learning a few of the published Zentangle classics first.
- "A Zentangle has no up or down and is not a picture of something, so you have no worries about whether you can draw a hand, or a duck. You always succeed in creating a Zentangle." Thus patterns that are drawings of a recognizable naturalistic or actual object, figure, or scene, are not tangles. A pattern is not always a tangle — here's what makes a tangle. TIP: tangles never start with pencil planning.
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May 24, 2010 | 
More like this: 
I struggled with W2 and I mean struggled. But after I “got” Huggins, I was able to do W2. I have to hand it to Vicki: she is the one who revealed the mystery of weaving and Shattuck to me. Hooray for Vicki!
Neither Vicki nor Suzanne McNeill (who gives steps for W2) give explicit instructions for beginning the “down” connection. And it took me a while before I realized it is a simple formula. In case it helps anybody, think of the horizontal line connectors as marching up, down, up, down, the up and down being relative to the squares or circles they are joining. Adjacent lines mirror this alternating connection. So, two horizontal rows would read
1. up, down, up, down, up, down
2. down, up, down, up, down, up
When you go to start the vertical connections, the pattern is inside, outside, inside, outside relative to the circles or squares. And the trick is, if the horizontal connector is up, the vertical connector is inside. Carry on the pattern from there. If the horizontal connector is down, the vertical connector is outside. This works at any point in the pattern (good to know for continuing the pattern in odd little nooks and crannies).
That looks TERRIFYING in print because it takes so long to explain but you can readily “see” it with just a couple of lines of example and prove it to yourself.
P.S. If you start off the vertical incorrectly, you might just want to carry on because the resulting variant is actually quite pleasing.
Thanks for sharing, Kim. I’m sure it will help out a lot of folks. This is definitely one of those patterns that requires total concentration.
I try and I try but I can not get this down:/
For many tangle patterns, one of the “secrets” is to be sure to turn your tile as you work.
So with this one, try doing all the horizontal lines first – Kim’s “up, down” tip helps with that.
Then turn the tile 90 degrees, and you’ve got horizontal lines to deal with again. It does require your full deliberate attention to each stroke.
Hope this helps! Keep trying, once you get it the “ah hah” moment is worth it.
Sorry to hear of your troubles. I assure you I had reams of pages of mangled Huggins before it finally clicked for me.
I have just read my post above and it reads like gobbledy gook so I won’t refer you to it but I can tell you that this is one of those ones you really have to deconstruct in your own mind–it had to “click” for me before I could do it, I couldn’t even just imitate it.
good luck!!!!!! Please let us know if you crack it.
this pattern need a lot of concentration and i need a lot of help
It definitely requires focus – have patience and you will get it.
I also had a horrible time with this one, and it finally clicked after trying many, many, many times.
Update 12/15/2016: In a blog post for last day of their “12 Days of 3Zs”, Rick and Maria post the steps to another way of tangling Huggins they’ve named Crazy Huggins.
In Zentangle’s “21 Days of Bijouisms” series honoring Mental Health Awareness Month, today’s bijouism is Reflect and today’s tangle is Huggins.