Resources on the Craft of Area Rugs

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Meet Other Rug Hookers
Perhaps the best way to improve your rug hooking and do a bit of socializing is to meet other rug hookers. There is a website called Meetup.com that facilitates people with common interests getting together in the local areas where they live. With Meetup.com, you can join an existing group, or create your own. If there is no group in your area, and you don't want to take the initiative, you can also sign up to express an interest so that someone who is organizationally minded can see there's some interest and start a group. At this writing there are groups in Sydney, Australia, Wesley Chapel, Fla., Tucson, Rochester, Mich., and Astoria, NY, but there's a fairly long list of locations with people who have expressed interest.

Make a Briaded Rug from Old Fabric
This do-it-yourself article with slideshow shows you how to make a beautiful braided rug from old fabric. All you need are basic braiding and hand-sewing skills, and you can probably make a rug in a single weekend. The article tells you what you're need, which is quite simple: long stribs of fabric (old sheets and curtains are ideal as easy to work with), sewing scissors, a ruler, pins, safety pins, sewing needles and thread that's neutral to your fabrics.

Making Braided Rugs
This rug-maker chronicled her rug-making progress during the winter season of 2003 and 2004. He or she made braided rugs out of woolen fabrics found at thrift stores, and in the house. You can peruse the pictures in the gallery, as the rug-maker gives tips and tricks and guides you through her own rug-making hobby. A wide variety of rug-making concepts are easily presented here, with pictures that illustrate the production.

General Rug Care and Cleaning Tips
Handmade rugs are expensive and sensitive, so you should know how to take care of them. In this article on the Capel Rugs website, you will understand the four main reasons why you should use rug pads. To prevent rugs from damage while not in use, there are also some storage tips. The most important tip here is to make sure the rug is clean before you store it. If you have pets at home such as cats and dogs, there are also some strong recommendations so these animals won't damage your rug. The last part contains a detailed step-by-step procedure on how to vacuum rugs properly.

How to Paint a Trompe L'oeil Rug
Trompe L'oel is from a French word, and it is an art technique involving extremely realistic imagery in order to create the optical illusion that the depicted objects appear in three dimensions. It was and still is popularly used in murals, which might show a window, door or hallway to suggest a larger room. In this how-to article by Diane Henkler she had painted a colorful rug on a hardwood floor. She tells you hoow to paint an area of your own floor to look like a colorful area rug. Learn how to prepare the area by priming the surface and taping it off, and then paint in the base colors of each part of the rug using a stencil design, which you can download from the site.

Braided Rug Facts
Braided rug facts are included on this website, which includes rug cleaning instructions, rug materials and rug production information. Rugs made of quality spun nylon rug yarn, which makes the rugs durable, stable and fade resistant. Also includes microfilament threads, and information about making rugs. Braids are made with a 5-carrier rug braider. There are only two types of braiding machines made specifically for producing rug braid. They are the 3-carrier and the 5-carrier rug braiders. We prefer and use the 5-carrier since it allows up to 5 colors in any strand of braid. Many braided rugs on the market today are braided using "harness braiders". If you take a second look at the rug and the braid does not appear as traditional braid or as you would braid someone's hair it was produced using a harness braider. These rugs are produced as cheaply as possible by wrapping a thin strand of inferior yarn around a tube. Tube rugs are hard to maintain and every time a strand of yarn breaks the tubular core starts to show. Also note the finishing technique employed with these rugs as well as the stitch length and stitch width. By using a long stitch length and a short stitch width these rugs can be sewn very quickly but quality is obviously sacrificed. Rugs are made using zig-zag sewing machine.


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