Washing a rug is a great way to brighten it up, but sometimes you will come across a stain that won’t wash out. In that case, you can either try to match the color, which can be difficult, or you may be able to bring in a new feature to the design to cover the stain. Often the best result would be to rehook the area.
My Counting Sheep rug got some wax on it (above). I scraped away as much of the wax as I could, then I washed the area with a hot cloth. Well, that didn’t take it all away, so I decided to rehook the green background. On that rug, each of the panels was a slightly different shade of green, so it didn’t matter much what shade I chose.
Here you see the panel with the background rehooked.
Spinning Wheel Rug, 29” diameter. Wool yarn on burlap. Designed and hooked by Judy Taylor
You can see the stain on this rug was at the base of the spinning wheel, on the left-hand side. It didn’t make sense to rehook the whole green background to get rid of the stain. So instead, I added a basket of yarn in the spot, using colors to match the roses.
So to get rid of a stain, if you can’t match the color perfectly, you can rehook the element or background area, or add a new design element.
In this Winnie the Pooh rug, there was a light stain by the leaves on the tree, and a small amount unhooked by the left butterfly. In order to hide the repairs, I just added a few clouds to the sky area. Then I bound the edge to protect it for the future.
Next Chapter: Unfinished Business
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