Have you spent many years and too many hours making hook rugs, but are always unhappy with unfinished edges? Do you put the rugs aside before finishing them and dread going back to them weeks, months or even years later?
Leaving the edges of your handmade rugs untied makes it too easy for bits of yarn to accidentally come off, too tempting for the family dog to chew on, and the edges get dirty too easily. Binding the edges with twill fabric using elaborate miter cuts, pins, or needle and thread can be tedious if you don’t like to sew (especially by hand). And having the rug professionally bound is prohibitively expensive. So what other solutions are available?
Tying the edges of your handmade hook-and-loop rugs with one of the new DIY rug ties is quick, easy, and only requires a few tools you’re sure to find around the house. This product is inexpensive and comes in a wide variety of styles and colors. You remove the backing paper that sticks to the bottom of the rug. Then, hot glue the attached pipe to the edges of the rug. In fact, if I’ve gathered all my tools and materials ahead of time, there are only about six steps. I can usually complete the joining of an average sized area rug in under an hour.
Sometimes I add a nice felt backing or padding to my rug, sewing it in with a stitch here and there before starting the binding process. This method gives my handmade rugs a polished, professional, finished look. They will look nice and neat and the edges will be completely protected from damage. They are less likely to fall apart, will be much stronger and will last longer. The best part is that I am no longer afraid to finish my rugs!
What you will need:
DIY rug binding tape
Scissors
glue gun
stick glue
Transparent tape
Instructions:
- Lay your hooked rug (with backing/filling, if you’re using it) on a flat surface and trim the edges to make sure there aren’t any loose bits of yarn or yarn getting in your way.
- Start with a clean, straight cut in the masking tape, remove some of the paper backing, and begin applying the self-adhesive tape to the back of your rug starting in the middle of one side.
- If you come to a corner, DO NOT cut the tape. Simply make a small cut in the flat part of the backing, up to but not through the pipe. This will help you turn the corner carefully. Continue around the corner, overlap the backing and continue, peeling and pressing, until you end up where you started. Until you start applying the hot glue, you can adjust the backing as needed.
- With the two ends glued together, join them together with a bit of hot glue.
- Now secure the pipe to the raw edge of the carpet by applying a dab of glue to the channel between the carpet edge and the pipe.
- Do about 6 inches at a time, stopping to press the pipe against the edge of the carpet until the glue dries.
Helpful Hint:
When you use these carpet tapes, your corners will always be slightly rounded. The pipe will not allow you to make 90 degree angles.
A little history of hooked rugs
Carpet hooking as we know it is a relatively new trade; he’s only about 170 years old. Most colonial Americans in the 1700s couldn’t afford to import expensive rugs from England, so unless they were wealthy, they generally had hardwood floors. By 1850, the United States had begun to import products from foreign countries, and some of those products (coffee, tobacco, grains) came from the West Indies in burlap sacks. Reclaimed burlap had a wide weave that made it easy to thread strips of cloth with a hook. It was sturdy and cheap, so poor settlers could create lovely hooked rugs from pieces of their old clothes and other scraps of cloth.
Unfortunately, burlap eventually disintegrated, so most of the early hooked rugs of the period did not survive. Over time, fabrics and dyes became more abundant and hook rugs became quite popular, only losing popularity in the early 1800s when factory-made rugs became available and home rugs fell out of fashion. . Fortunately for us, handmade rugs are becoming popular again and have even become an art form.
