How to Make Hook Rugs, Traditional Hooked Rugs

The old-fashioned hooked rug has been brought down from its attic prison, and is even lovelier now with its faded colors than it was fifty years ago, when its place was usurped by that hideous impostor, the large-figured Brussels carpet. These vintage hook rugs were made by the thrifty New England housekeeper on the coarse cotton sugar-bag after it had been soaked and boiled to shrink the material and get out all the dressing. For the top of the rug worsted yarns were used, as well as cloth strips. But, of course, the latter made the rug economical. The cloth strips are cut three-quarters of an inch wide on the bias, but need not be sewed together.

The making process is simply hooking a loop, about one-half inch long, of the cut strips through canvas or some other loosely woven cotton or linen fabric. A short awl with its point turned up makes a fine hooking-tool. Each loop is hooked through close to the last one until the whole surface of the canvas is covered. Then the loops are shorn to form a piled surface on the right side. And the wrong side of the rug is backed with another piece of canvas to prevent the work from pulling out. Some makers give the wrong side a thin coat of sizing, but that seems unhygienic and quite unnecessary if the work is backed. And, too, the glue is apt to make the rug stiff.

Hooked rugs admit a wider range of design than the others. Pattern is quite possible, but only large masses work out with good effect. Small patterns or those with much delicacy of detail lose that quality, and their form as well, in the making. The pattern should be drawn on the canvas with black crayon as a guide for working. But to be sure of color effects a cartoon should be made on which the colors of the material to be hooked have been rendered as near as possible in crayon. This will be a help in working, and to have one is the only sure way of avoiding mistakes.

Continue: Hand Weaving Looms.