Mixing yarn and wool strips in your rug hooking project

rug hooking with yarn and wool strips heart rug hooking project

Rug hooking is traditionally done with either wool strips or wool yarn. Other fabric types can be used, such as velvet, velour, wool roving, cotton, and synthetic fibers. It's very easy to mix both together in a project, and can offer additional texture and interest to a piece. Here are a few examples of mixing wool strips and yarn in one project.

A sparkly yarn added to a piece can add color, texture and a new visual element that blends in well with the existing piece. Another advantage is that yarn can be pushed and shoved into smaller places than wool strips. For this mat the sparkle outline was added between the grey border and the colored part of each square, after all of the hooking was finished. This can be easily done if the loops aren't packed too tightly. One thing to consider, particularly when working with synthetic material, is how the elements might age over time. This rug is now several years old, and the yarn has started to shed slightly. The yarn itself was a similar color to the wool strips (grey, pink and purple variegated). Don't underestimate how much yarn is needed for a project like this - I used more than one skein of this yarn to finish the project and had to hunt down a second skein.

 Sparkle yarn in rug hooking project

Here's another example of yarn that was used to outline the purple diamonds. The color of the yarn and the wool strips were similar. Adding the yarn gave pops of turquoise and purple mixed with the regular strips.

Another way is to hook certain elements with yarn and others with wool strips. In this case the heart is hooked with yarn, and the background with wool strips. They are a similar size (three ply yarn and #5 cut wool strips), and were hooked at the same height, but these two elements could easily be hooked at different heights.

Heart rug hooking project with yarn and wool strips
This can work with any ply of yarn, here's a four ply yarn with #5 background strips. The hearts pop out a bit compared with the background. I did find hooking with four ply a little tricky, it was easy to not grab all of the yarn at one time.
If you whip the edges with yarn, the same color can be used in the piece and for the whipping. You can also adjust the yarn on the edge to match the pattern (more about that here).

 

 

 





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