Cindi Gay Rug Hooking

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Lessons, tips and tricks about traditional rug hooking.

Get help hooking your pictorial hooked rugs – New edition

Are you struggling while rug hooking pictorial rugs?  This book can help.

Some of you picked up the book when it was available for the first time at Sauder Village in August 2015.  Many of you found it on the website, but I’ve never announced that it was available … until now.

How to Rug Hook Pine Trees, Grass and Sky by Cindi GayThe book more closely resembles the Kindle version on Amazon.  If you prefer to hold real paper in your hands, this is the book for you.

Even if you have the old version (editions 1 -4), you’ll find something new in this one.  Most of the pages have color pictures.  All of the illustrations are larger.  There is more text.

Rug hooking landscapes to look realistic can be difficult.  All the changes have been designed to help you rug hook pictorials.

The book has grown from 17 pages in edition 1 to almost 80!  You can buy it here.

Reviews

My designs have improved so much since I purchased your book. I would say to all, purchase this book, you will be glad you did.
— Jan

Not just pretty pictures, but lots of information and techniques on how to actually create pictorial rugs. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone in the rug hooking world. I have come back to it many times. It’s a keeper for sure and a valuable part of my rug hooking library.
— Lorac

This book is equally valuable to the beginner and the expert rug hooker. It is also extremely interesting and well written. If you buy one book for your rug hooking reference library this year, this should be it.
— delanolady

These are just excerpts of the first three reviews on Amazon. You can read them all here. Be sure to leave your own comments if you’ve read the book!

What is your best tip for rug hooking pictorial rugs?

Use the comment box below to share your best tip or ah-ha moment.

If you bought on Amazon, please leave your review there also. It helps other rug hookers to find my book and to make a decision if it is right for them.

How much yarn do I need to whip my hooked rug?

This entry is part 4 of 7 in the series Fold Forward Finish

test

June 2016 update: I cannot get the calculator embedded into the website. Click this link to visit it in another page. If it ever stops working again, please let me know. In case you are curious, here’s how to do the calculations yourself:

Width + Width + Length + Length = Perimeter inches

Perimeter inches divided by how many inches your whipping covers = number of pieces you need

Number of pieces you need * the length of strand you used = Number of inches of yarn needed

Number of inches of yarn needed divided by 36" = Number of yards you need.

calculator

Whipping a rug takes a long time. Ripping it out because you run out of yarn and have to start over with something else is a nightmare. Run the numbers before you begin.

Do a whipping test

Use a piece of scrap backing and prepare the edge so you can practice whipping. A section about 8″ long should be enough. Here are some posts to get you started:

  • Finishing a hooked rug – zig zag or not?
  • Fold Forward Finish- Zig Zagging the Edge
  • Fold Forward Finish: Baste the Edge in Place
  • Fold Forward Finish: The Whipping Yarn
  • How much yarn do I need to whip my hooked rug?
  • Whipping Tips for Finishing your Hooked Rug
  • Fold Forward Rug Finish: Whipping the Edge


    • I typically use a 5′ or 60″ long piece of yarn to whip my rugs. Do not let the yarn shop wind the yarn into a ball for you. Instead, leave it in a skein and untwist it so it is a circle. Cut through one place on the circle through all the strands. That will quickly give you strands of yarn that are approximately the same length, about 5′ long.

    Use one piece to whip your scrap sample. Now enter your numbers above and count out the number of strands you need. Do you have enough? You’ll know right away.

    No time to do a test? Most rugs will only use a fraction of a skein. You can whip 594 inches or just under 50 feet using my example of 4.5″ of whipping from a 60″ strip using my favorite whipping yarn.

    Rug Hooking Rules: What you MUST do

    rug hook
    Ready for some rug hooking rules? Just one: Do what you think is right. It really is just that simple. This is an art form. Does the painter get criticized about how the brush is held? Do people turn the work over to check the back? NO!

    Give yourself permission to be a little “wrong.” There is no right or wrong way to do anything and that applies to rug hooking. There are certain practices that generate certain results. For instance, I’ve had students apologize to me that they did not hook the sky on their rug using “my way.” My book, Pine Trees, Grass and Sky explains a step by step method to achieve a very realistic (and easy) sky. That is only one way to hook a sky. It is not the only way and may not be suitable for your rug.

    Do what is right for you. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes. My best work happens when I take a chance, rug hooking or not. What you MUST do is rug hook. Don’t listen to the criticism of others. If you ask advice, ask why they are recommending a method or a color. If they cannot tell you why, walk away. If it does not sound right, don’t listen. Smile and walk away. Do your own rug hooking. These are your rugs.

    Here is an example of a question I received this week.

    Hi. Can you go around and around starting at the outer edge and working inward to make a square? Or can you start in the center and work out toward the edges? More importantly, do you need to stop and start at the corners or can you just turn your work and keep going if you’re not ready to change colors yet? Someone told me not to turn corners. Thanks.

    Kathy via comments

    For everyone who tells you to never do something, you’ll find someone else who will say to always do it. You will need to find your own way in rug hooking, as in life. Always ask: why?

    I never stop and start at the corners because I think stopping and starting at the corners makes the edge weak. Do I have evidence? No, it just seems right to me.

    I like to start at the outside. I want a full even row on the outside and I really don’t care where the center ends up. I will often make more rows on one side just to throw the center off. Trying to find the exact center and working out is just too much trouble, IMHO, the same goes for circles.

    I also turn rows when I am hooking the siding of a building. I don’t like the row of ends on the sides. “Hiding the end” just creates another illusion. I stop and start at random places in the center of the row and turn at each end. The slight bump is less “ugly” to me than a row of tails.

    Download the Rug Hooking Rules to pass out at your next rug hooking meeting.

    How to use a value finder to choose rug hooking wool

    Choosing the right wool is all about choosing the right value. Color is important, but value is what makes it work. Look at these wools I pulled off the shelf to hook a pine tree. Will they work? The colors look right, but are the values right?

    pine-wool-group-2

    One way to check is with a value finder. As usual, I could not find mine but I don’t use it much anyways. They come in many shapes and sizes, sometimes in two colors, red and green. Use the green one for cool colors and the red for warm colors. When in doubt, use them both. With the Easter season approaching, you can use red or green cellophane, the stuff used to wrap Easter baskets. The problem with this material is that it wrinkles easily and the wrinkles make it harder to see the wool. It does not travel very well.

    Technology has changed so much in just the last year or so that I no longer need the value finders. The easiest method is to take a photograph and then change the photograph to greyscale. Your camera may have an option for this, but the view finder is quite small and can be difficult to see.

    My favorite gadget, the iPad, can make this really easy. Just search the app store for grayscale or greyscale (you’ll get different results) and try one of the free apps. The one I really like is called Grayscale Camera. I works just like the camera on the ipad except it gives you a small black and white preview in the lower left. You may not even need to snap the photo!

    UPDATE: This app is an iPhone app. After you search, you will have to select the button at the top of the page for iPhone. The app works just as well on the ipad. After installing, just click the 2x button once in the lower right. It will fill the screen and act just like an iPad app.

    pine-wool-group-both

    pine-wool-group-bw

    From this photo we can tell that there is enough difference between the values. The color really doesn’t matter. Flip this around and use the grayscale method to choose your background wools. If you can’t tell a difference in black and white, you will not see a difference once they are hooked. They will blend beautifully.

    How to rug hook a sunset sky and water using specially dyed wool

    This entry is part 2 of 2 in the series Sunset or sunrise

    How to hook a regular sky

    I use an easy method with my specially dyed sky wool to hook a normal day time sky.


    The method is described in detail in Pine Trees, Grass and Sky. This method does not work for our nighttime sky on this project.

    How to rug hook a nightime sky

    This sky does not have any shading, but the water does…

    How to rug hook the water

    I custom dyed the wool for this project. You can hook anything with the right wool. We’ll use the sky method I use in my book, Pine Trees, Grass and Sky to rug hook this water.

    Break the water area on your pattern and the spot dyed wool into the same number of sections. Four is an easy number. Split it in half and then each section into half. For finer control split it further, into eight or even sixteen sections (a yard is easily split into 16 pieces). This is explained in more detail in the book.

    rughooking wool dyed for night water
    Dyed wool
    Wool divided into sections for rug hooking night water
    Wool divided into sections

    Once you identify your sections, hook the water using only wool from section one in section one, only section two wool goes into section two, etc. You can find more information about this technique in my book, Pine Trees, Grass and Sky.

    Use the fine cut shading method to number the wool, the lightest value is always number 1. Note that the water in the photo is lighter at the bottom and darker at the top. Arrange the wool in that manner to number your sections. This is different than the “standard” way I describe in the Pine Trees, Grass and Sky book but it is right for this project.

    Unusual lighting or other conditions will often “break the rules.”

    What cut size should I use to rug hook the water?

    Because the distances are so vast in this photo, let’s use the cut size of the wool to our advantage. Start with a larger cut closer to the viewer (at the bottom of the rug) and decrease the cut size as you move away. Objects get smaller as they move into the distance and changing the cut size helps with that illusion.

    Start with a size 8 and move in sections to as small as a 4, depending on the size of your pattern. The larger the pattern, the more vast the image, the greater the span of cut sizes. A small pictorial could move from just a six to a 4, for instance.

    Using cut size to show distance in rug hooking
    A gradual change in cut size helps the ground or water to “lay down” instead of looking like a green or blue wall.

    It is more important in this particular pattern to change the cut size because the spot dyed wool will automatically create the waves. We want the waves or ripples to look smaller in the distance. Changing the cut size will do that automatically. Again, with the right wool you can hook anything!

    How to rug hook a sunset sky

    There is no need to use a special method for this nighttime sky. While it is still important to avoid bricks in the sky (see the section on how to hook sky in the book, Pictorial Basics: Pine Trees, Grass and Sky), there is no need to mark the sky into 4 sections. The color is consistent from top to bottom creating the illusion of darkness.

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