My husband booked me a rug tufting workshop on a public holiday earlier this year, as it was something on my to try list for a while.
Thank goodness he told me in advance to plan for a design - he wanted some foliage, so I found a few examples of foliage rugs for inspiration, decided on monstera leaves, and drew a picture the for our rug.
When we arrived, I was advised to simplify it as it was our first time, so we zoomed in and drew just part of the design for our rug.
This was me tracing the outline of the inverse image projected on the canvas
They have so many shades of colours of yarn to choose from - more than what I could use for my variegated monstera leaves.
Chose a 3 colours + black background, because we thought it would look less dirty if we ended up really using it as a rug
Looking strong with the tufting gun (at least at the start...)
Trying to slowly tuft in straight lines - the tufting gun can only move in one direction, so will need to "turn" / guide it in the direction to fill out the space
Looking fuzzy from the front
Tufting orderly lines from the back
What the back of the rug looks like as the canvas is filled - they recommended not to tuft the lines too close to each other, as the rug may "curl up" if the yarn is tufted too densely. I always thought denser = more fluffy = better - who knew! The staff will run their fingers through the front of the rug to inspect whether the density of yarn is sufficient, and pointed out a few spots which could do with a little bit more tufting.
And that's a wrap!
Me and their wall of colourful yarn
It finally got delivered to our place 2 months after our session (there was a delay due to shortage of rug backing material).
A little help from AI to optimize the image contrast
On hindsight, would probably have picked a more contrasting colour for the background (because I don't think we will actually really be using it as a rug), or a lighter shade of dark green to stand out more against the black. Still a decent first attempt I'd say! And fits eight in with our monstera plant in a black pot!
Details of the workshop
Duration: about 2.5 hours, but the workshop needs about 5-6 weeks to process the finishing (e.g. glue the rug backing etc.) before mailing the rug to you
Price: SGD128 for the beginners 2.5 hour workshop, booked on the WeTuft website
Level of "fun": 3/5
I've tried punch embroidery, which pretty much feels like a manual version of rug tufting. Or in this case, since a machine is involved, kinda like sewing vertically.
It's always an interesting experience when learning to use new equipment, and the tufting gun was no exception. The repetitive punching as you move the gun across the canvas can get pretty meditative. The gun is not light, and you notice the weight after some time, so the fun transitions into a bit of a workout.
Level of difficulty: 2/5
The experience was relatively easy. The staff explained and demonstrated how to use the tufting gun - loading the new yarn colours, and how to manoeuvre the gun to the direction we want to get it to.
Tufting is relatively forgiving, because you can pull out the yarn and redo it again if the first shot didn't work out as planned, but only up to two or three times, as the weave of the canvas will get looser, and not be able to hold the yarn if we try to tuft it too many times.
Also just needs a bit of arm strength stamina - at some point I felt like my fingers and arms were getting sore, but I don't do any strength training with my arms, so that might just be me being weak.