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Creating Heirlooms
Featured Rug of the Month--
November 2007
MOUNTING YOUR HOOKED PIECES ON WOOD
While hooked rugs are durable and long lasting as floor rugs, they can also be used in many other decorative items. You can design a hooked rug to decorate an existing wood piece, or cut your wood to create a backing designed especially for the item.
For the Carousel Rocking Horse and the Dancing Goats Toybox, I made a paper cutout of the areas I wanted to cover, then created a design on the paper using a pencil (that way I could experiment, and change elements until I got something that looked good to me). Then I went over all of my pencil lines with a Sharpie pen, so they would be easier to see. I layed window screen (you can buy this by the roll at a hardware store) over my paper design, and went over all the lines once again with the Sharpie pen. I then put the window screen over the burlap backing and transfered all the lines again with the Sharpie pen.
For the Victorian Santa, I drew my design freehand on paper, and followed all of the previous steps to transfer my design to the burlap backing. I cut out the paper design after it was transfered so I could use it to cut out my wood backing.
Once the pattern pieces were hooked, I cut them out and hemmed them, simply turning the edges over and sewing with regular thread (it is good to take deep stitches, so you are sure to catch the backing in your needle, not just a loop of yarn). Then I pressed the back with a steam iron for a nice flat edge.
Glueing your hooked pieces to the wood: I prefer an unfinished surface for glueing, but if your piece is already finished, you might sand it a bit where the hooked piece will go, to help the glue to adhere. Spread an even amount of Elmers glue on the wood surface, place your hooked piece on it, adjust the placing if necessary, and weigh it down to dry (a pile of books makes a good weight, evenly spread out over the area being glued). Let it dry this way for 24 hours. Then carefully finish the rest of the wood surface in whatever style you like.
Do you have a rug you would like to see featured on this website? E-mail me! If your rug is featured, you will get your choice of a copy of my book, "Hooking With Yarn" or a free yard of linen. Share your stories with us, we love to hear them! Visit our Featured Rug Archive to see the many rugs that have been featured so far.
For the month of November, you can purchase any of these three finished items for 30% off. Just click on the item for more info!
