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Rug Making
Rug Making
Rug making is a traditional craft and includes a variety of different techniques. It is a very rewarding craft as when you have completed your piece you have a wonderful item that becomes part of your home furnishings. It is a great craft to take up as you do not need much equipment to start and it is not expensive.
Hooked Rugs
There are several ways of making hooked rugs, Rug Hooking, Latch Hooking and Punch Needle Hooking. Hooked rugs are worked on canvas or Hessian. When working with these fabrics it is important at the beginning to fold masking tape over the raw edges all the way around your piece of canvas before you start. This stops it from unravelling as you work.
Rug Hooking
The traditional way of making a hooked rug is to do so using a material called Hessian (Burlap in the US). This is a dense woven fabric made from the jute plant or sisal fibres. The design is drawn onto the fabric. It is then stretched over a frame to keep it taut. Strips of fabric are then used to hook through the holes in the Hessian. The fabric that you are hooking through the Hessian needs to be cut into strips. For straight forward hooked rugs you use a rug hook. This is a very simple piece of equipment and is easily available.
You hold the hook as you would a pencil and stick it through the hole in the Hessian. Hold the fabric in your other hand, underneath the Hessian, and starting at one end of the fabric strip hook it onto the end of your rug hook and pull a loop through the hole. Leave two or three threads between the hole you have just hooked through and the next hole you will be using. Stick your rug hook through this hole and repeat the process until you have a lovely neat row of fabric loops.
Latch Hooking
A Latch Hook is a tool that has been designed to pull loops of yarn through canvas. This is a very popular form of rug making. To make what is described as a Latch Hook rug you would nee to use small lengths of wool. These are then pulled through the canvas.
A Latch Hooked rug pattern is made as a chart where each square on the grid represents one hole in your canvas. The colour of the square tells you the colour of the piece of wool that needs to go through that hole. There would be one piece of wool for each hole in the canvas. It is recommended that you start at the bottom left corner and work your way across in horizontal rows until the entire piece of canvas is full.
Punch Needle Hooking
The Punch Needle tool is for use with wool. It is literally punched into the fabric and then pulled out; a piece of yarn will have been trapped in the weave of the fabric you are punching. Then you move onto the next place and punch again and so on. There is a loop created on the opposite side of the fabric with each punch. This is a much faster way of creating a rug. You must remember however that you do need to reverse your design because you are working from the back of your finished rug and not the front like you do in the rug hooking method.
Finishing off Hooked Rugs
When your rug is complete you need to look for any gaps where you can see the backing fabric. If there are any then fill them in before you finish off. Take the finished rug off your frame and do what is called ‘blocking’. Blocking is when you cover the back of the rug with a damp cloth and iron making sure that it is drying in the correct shape. When it is dry you need to sew rug-binding tape around the edges, making sure that you mitre any corners. If you do not bind the edges properly then your rug may have a tendency to stretch on the bias taking it out of shape.
Woven Rugs
Woven Rag rugs
This sort of rug making is not done on Hessian but on a frame that has been strung with a warp. This can be done by hammering nails or screws onto your frame for each warp string. Or instead it can be done on an actual loom. Cut your fabric into strips. Then weave them in and out of your warp. Press them down with a piece of dowel to make sure that they lie as far down as possible. Then weave the next strip through making sure that the warp strings that were behind the first fabric strip are now in front of this new strip. Keep repeating this process for each fabric strip that you add until you have the rug length you require. You can then tie off any ends once you have finished.
Woven Wool Rugs
These are done using the same method as the woven rag rugs but using wool yarns instead of fabric strips.
Braided Rugs
These are made from strips of fabric usually about two inches wide and about three or four feet long. They need to be cut along the straight edge of the fabric and not the bias. You attach three of these strips to something such a pillow with a safety pin. Braid (plait) these three strips together. Then you wind the braid around, usually in a circle or oval shape. Stitch each braid together as it meets slowly building up a rug. Make sure that you do not pull too tightly as you are winding the braids together as you will end up with a cup shape that will not lie flat.
Toothbrush Rugs
These are very similar to braided rugs in how the finished item looks, but they are made in a very different way. They are called Toothbrush rugs because they were made using just that – a toothbrush. This dates back to a time when toothbrushes were made with a hole in the end which was discovered to be just the right size to thread with a strip of fabric. The brush end was removed and smoothed over. Now it is easier to just buy a large plastic needle. You start with a base strip and a second strip which you then use to make knots down the first strip. Instructions for this type of rug making are readily available on the internet and seem similar to forms of crochet. You keep knotting each round of strips through the previous loops using your ‘toothbrush’ needle.
Penny Rugs
These are a type of rug that were traditionally made from scraps of wool and felted wool from old clothes, blankets, hats etc. A coin was used as a template and the recycled fabrics were cut into circles. These circles were then sewn onto the wool background using blanket stitch. On the whole these ‘rugs’ were used as decorative pieces to go on beds and tables. Quite often they depicted stars, hearts, birds, flowers and cats. When done they were sewn to a backing made of wool, linen or Hessian to hide all the stitching on the back. Sometime these round wool shapes were sewn on top of each other decreasing in size, again using blanket stitch, and then just sewn to each other creating a unique piece with gaps in-between each circle. There are plenty of wonderful kits for making Penny Rugs available.
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