Have you spent many years and too many hours doing hooks, but always satisfied with the unfinished edges? Do you put carpets before you finish them, and are you afraid to come back to them for weeks, months, or even years?
Leaving the edges of your hand-woven rugs untied, it’s too easy for pieces of yarn to be accidentally pulled out, too tempting for the family dog to chew on, and the edges to become very dirty. Binding the edges with a rag fabric using complex cuts, pins or needles and threads can be tedious if you don’t like to sew (especially by hand). And having a professionally knitted carpet is prohibitively expensive. So what other solutions are available?
Tying the edges of your handmade carpets with one of the new homemade carpet tapes is quick, easy and requires only a few tools that you’ll find around the house. This product is inexpensive and comes in a variety of styles and colors. You peel the paper from the backing, which sticks to the underside of the carpet. Then you attach the attached pipeline to the edges of the carpet with hot glue. In fact, if I collected all my tools and materials ahead of time, there are only six steps. I can usually complete the binding of a medium size rug in less than an hour.
Sometimes I add a nice felt backing or pad to my rug, sticking it in here and there before I begin the binding process. This method gives my hand-made mats a sophisticated, professional and complete look. They will look beautiful and neat, and the edges will be fully protected from damage. They are less likely to fall apart, will be much more durable and longer. The best part is that I no longer step on my carpets!
What you need:
DIY carpet tape
Scissors
Hot glue
Glue stick
Clear tape
Instructions:
- Place your hook carpet (using a lining / pant if you use it) on a flat surface and trim the edges to make sure that there are no loose pieces of yarn or thread that interfere with you.
- Start with a clean, straight cut on the binding tape, peel off a piece of paper, and start applying self-adhesive tape to the back of your carpet, starting in the middle of one side.
- If you reach a corner, DO NOT cut the bonding tape. Just make a small cut in the flat part of the substrate, but not through the pipeline. This will help you to go deep into a corner. Continue to move the corner, lay a substrate on it and continue moving, peeling and pressing until you finish where you started. Until you start applying hot glue, you can adjust the backing as needed.
- With the two ends pressed together, attach them together with a small amount of hot glue.
- Now secure the pipeline to the untreated edge of the mat by squeezing a glue bead in the channel between the edge of the mat and the pipeline.
- Do about 6 inches at a time, stopping to press the pipe against the edge of the mat until glue is installed.
Helpful advice:
When you use these carpet tapes, your corners will always be slightly rounded. Pipes will not allow you to make 90-degree angles.
Little history of hook carpets
The Ark, as we know, is a relatively new craft; he is only about 170 years old. Most of the colonial Americans in the 1700s could not afford to import expensive carpets from England, so if they were not rich, they usually had wooden floors. By 1850, America began to import products from abroad, and some of these products (coffee, tobacco, grain) came from the West Indies in bags of bags. The rescued burlap had a wide cover, which made it easy to pull out the strips of fabric with a hook. It was strong and cheap, so poor colonists could create beautiful hooked rugs from pieces of their old clothes and other pieces of cloth.
Unfortunately, burlap often falls apart, so most of the early carpet hooks of that time did not survive. Over time, fabrics and dyes became more numerous, and hooked carpets became quite popular, only lost favor at the turn of the 19th century, when factory-made carpets were made, and home-made carpets became incompatible. Luckily for us, handmade carpets are again popular and have even become an art form!
