| I was recently asked to help repair a few hooked rug projects. The family pets had pulled out strips in various parts of the rug. Luckily, most of the yarn that had been pulled out was still in the piece and could be reused. |
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This rug had a mesh glued over the entire back of the piece. First, using a stitch ripper, stitching along the border was undone and peeled back. The mesh backing was carefully peeled back, just along the part that needed to be re-hooked. |
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It was sticky and somewhat difficult to pull back. The yarn that had been pulled out by the pet had bits of the glue stuck to it. While not ideal, this could be worked with. |
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First, all the bits of yarn were all pulled to the top of the piece and cut off to make it easier to hook the piece. This same wool was used to fix the piece, but care was taken to work around the bits of glue that were stuck to the yarn. In a few cases the glue could be carefully cut away from the yarn. In addition, some matching color yarn was used if the wool was missing. The yarn was re-hooked by holding the yarn from the bottom of the piece and pulling up loops to the same height as the existing wool using a rug hook. |
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Depending on the wool available, a piece like this can be modified slightly with little impact on the overall pattern, for example, if the fox foot is a little shorter than the original, and more green background was used to fill in around it, it's not obvious in the finished piece. |
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Once all the hooking is repaired, the back edge was sewn shut. The piece can also be pressed with an iron to blend in the new hooking with the existing hooking. |
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