Rug Making

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Latch Hook Rugs
Design & Make Your Own Floor Rug
Designing Latch-Hook Rugs

Designing Latch-Hook Rugs

My Mother created this design and made the Rug. My Mother also created the sketches below.

Click here for a photo of some of the rugs she made
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There are any number of ways to tackle designing rugs.  One rather fun method is just to grab a pen or some coloured pencils and a piece of graph paper and mess about for a while, filling the squares with ink crosses or colour.


A slightly more organised way is to sketch a rough outline in pencil to create a basic shape and then fill in the colour.

Work out the general shape you want.


My Mother had a green theme in her home


If you are intending to create a design that has repeat or complimentary patterns at each end of the rug or perhaps in each corner then first design up one side or one corner and repeat, in reverse, at the other end of the rug or in the other three corners.

Sketch out rough sequences and then expand on a theme.


You'll be pleasantly surprised at the result!


Cut & Paste bits of your design in progress.


Experiment with different colours for the same theme.


The detail can be important!


If you need guidance look through pictures, magazines or even knittting and embroidery patterns that have graphs with designs.

Design & Make Your Own Floor Rug

My mother designed and made a number of of latch-hook rugs.
Click here to see her graph paper designs

The best part of rug-making is designing your own pattern.  It's immensely satisfying and a lot of fun.  Sit at a table with your coloured pencils and a load of graph paper and start playing about with designs. 
You could begin with a few light pencil sketches and then gradually colour in the squares.  Its quite a good idea to have a rough theme in mind and to start in one corner, then when you've got it right you can just copy it into the other three corners to make a symetrical design.  There are so many options - abstract patterns, detailed pictures - try out your artistic flare!

When my father was unwell I copied onto graph paper his Dorsetshire Regiment Shield and he made a latch-hook hearth rug by following the design.


 I made a small latch-hook rug to place underneath my spinning wheel. 

Latch Hook Rugs

The rose is small and took only a couple of days to make.  It came as a kitset and the pattern was already painted onto the canvas with a paper graph included. The wool was pre-cut and sorted into colours. Once framed, it made an attractive picture.

It's fun designing patterns for latch hook rugs made with wool.  Use crayons on graph paper and play about trying different colours and themes.  Alternatively, you can sometimes buy pattern books although these tend to be rather few and far between!  You can adapt embroidery patterns and some knitting patterns that have a graph picture.

A very large rug to cover the floor of your main reception room will probably take many months to make and if it is a big room it could run into a year or two.  Even hearth rugs can take several weeks.

Rug-making is very adaptable.   You can buy pre-cut wool for rug-making or you can get an up to date cutter that is much more efficient than a stick with a groove!


The wool is wound round and round the stick and then it is cut along the centre of the groove.  It is an old-fashioned method of cutting the wool.



Rug-making equipment:- latch hooks, cutting sticks with a groove in the middle and scissors.