Women employed whatever materials they had available. Poor women began looking through their scrap bags for materials to employ in creating their own home-made floor coverings. The vogue for floor coverings in the United States came about after 1830 when factories produced machine-made carpets for the rich. In its earliest years, rug hooking was a craft of poverty. Rug hooking as we know it today may have developed in North America, specifically along the Eastern Seaboard in New England in the United States, the Canadian Maritimes, and Newfoundland and Labrador. However, in the publication "Rag Rug Making" by Jenni Stuart-Anderson, ISBN 978-1-90, Stuart-Anderson states that the most recent research indicates ".the technique of hooking woolen loops through a base fabric was used by the Vikings, whose families probably brought it to Scotland." To add to this there are sound examples at the Folk Museum in Guernsey, Channel Islands, that early rag rugs made in the same manner were produced off the coast of France as well. Kent pointed out a reference in Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor. The origins of the word thrum are ancient, as Mr. These by-products were useless to the mill, and the weavers took them home and pulled the thrums through a backing. Workers in weaving mills were allowed to collect thrums, pieces of yarn that ran 9 inches (23 cm) long. The author William Winthrop Kent believed that the earliest forebears of hooked rugs were the floor mats made in Yorkshire, England, during the early part of the 19th century. Rug-hooking has been popular in North America for at least the past 200 years. When using the hand-torn technique the rugs are usually done in a primitive motif.ĭesigns for the rugs are often commercially produced and can be as complex as flowers or animals to as simple as geometrics. These precision strips are usually cut using a mechanical cloth slitter however, the strips can also be hand-cut or torn. Wool strips ranging in size from 3/32 to 10/32 of an inch (2 to 8 mm) in width are often used to create hooked rugs or wall hangings. In contrast latch-hooking uses a hinged hook to form a knotted pile from short, pre-cut pieces of yarn. The loops are pulled through the backing material by using a crochet-type hook mounted in a handle (usually wood) for leverage. Rug hooking is both an art and a craft where rugs are made by pulling loops of yarn or fabric through a stiff woven base such as burlap, linen, or rug warp. Bonus: It’s mess-free, affordable, and fun.A craftsperson creates a hooked rug by pulling lengths of cloth, usually wool, through a woven fabric, usually burlap. I recently started a puppy latch hook while my daughter completes a cupcake, and I can confirm that the hobby is as simple and satisfying as I remembered. In the depths of winter, we’re all going to be indoors even more: We’ll need more than playing Among Us and baking sourdough to get us through. We’re spending an unprecedented amount of time glued to screens these days-whether for work or school or socializing-and we need screen-free outlets that also allow us to unplug mentally. And I’m here to suggest that we should all do it now. It is an easy, meditative craft that offers pretty instant gratification as you watch your rows stack up.ĭuring my youth, latch hook was-for a time-all the rage. All you have to do is match the yarn to the color of the rung in the row you’re working on et voilà, the pattern or picture will emerge. For those not in-the-know, latch hook involves taking a precut piece of yarn and using a hooking tool to loop it around a rung of a piece of canvas that’s imprinted with a design.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |