Tried & True

If you’re interested in making a tufted rug and don’t fancy the idea of using a hook to pull each individual thread through, then a tufting gun is what you’ll need. There’s a few different versions on the market; ones that form looped pile, ones that make a strand pile, ones that do both and even pneumatic tufting guns which use compressed air. But if you’re starting out, a simple strand pile tufting gun like this one is the probably the best place to start.

In simple terms, once you’ve threaded the gun with your chosen colour and thickness of wool, and you’ve stretched the specific backing fabric tightly over a frame, you press the gun firmly against the stretched fabric and then guide the moving gun across it to produce a design.

Much like a sewing machine, the gun has a foot which sits against the fabric. Once you pull the trigger, the sharp channeled needle then pushes the wool through the fabric before a small pair of snips pop out of the channel and snip off the wool so it’s left embedded in the fabric. But it will keep firing the wool into the fabric really quickly, and almost feels as if it’s self-propelled, so you need to have a design in mind before you start.