When it comes to designing your own rugs, the possibilities are seemingly endless. Around the world and throughout human history there is a rich tradition of weaving textiles for the walls and the floor. And with recent revival of hand weaving, there’s never been a better time to learn to weave your own rugs! But with so many options, it can be hard to know where to even begin.

In my Rug Weaving online course, I take my students through 14 different rug designs, from basic to advanced. Each design is intended to demonstrate a different aesthetic possibility for your rug weaving - and the technical challenges that come along with it. They cover the skills I think every rug weaver should have if they want to create beautiful and long-lasting rugs.

1. Stripes

A simple rug with a striped border is an ideal first project when you’re just starting out. The design is very straightforward, which leaves you free to focus on honing your technique.

Beginner weavers often struggle with keeping their warp and weft evenly spaced. When weaving stripes, you’ll be able to see right away if your warp or weft is becoming distorted, because the lines themselves will start to curve up or down.

Thats why I encourage my students to start with stripes. Learning to weave flat stripes across the loom is excellent practice in handling your warp and your weft, and will help you spot any mistakes in your technique early on.

2. Colour Blending

Once you’re comfortable with basic weaving technique, a fun project to try is a colour blend rug. To do this, you can wind up your shuttles with strands of different colours of weft, and weave them together to create a speckled effect on the loom.

This technique is very simple, but it’s a great way to create complexity and depth in your rug designs. It’s also really useful if you’re weaving a rug that might get dirty, as the speckled effect makes any stains much less obvious.

3. Hatching

Once you’re comfortable with stripes and basic weaving technique, I recommend experimenting with hatching.

Hatching involves weaving alternating long and short rows of different coloured weft, creating an overlapping effect between them. I encourage my students to try this technique because its an excellent way to get used to weaving with separate weft sections.

It’s also helpful as a reminder to construct your rug slowly and carefully, block by block or line by line. One of the common mistakes people make in rug weaving is weaving one area up too high, where it is unsupported by the rest of the design.

The hatching technique, on the other hand, must be woven little by little, with all the separate sections fitting together like the pieces of a puzzle or a wall of bricks. This slow process is crucial for weaving a solidly constructed rug with a smooth consistent surface that will stand the test of time.

4. Vertical Blocks

Once you’ve mastered horizontal stripes, you can start to think about building your designs up vertically.

Another frequent issue for beginner weavers is finding that gaps open up in their rug between the separate sections of weaving. To help my students avoid this, I get them to practice the Vertical Blocks design.

This involves weaving seven or nine separate blocks of weft side by side on the loom. When you do this, it’s important to focus on weaving the edges of each section just right, so that there are no gaps or bulging overlaps between each one.

The wide sections of weaving above and below each row of blocks locks them in place and keeps them secure. With enough practice, you’ll find that the gaps between each section are only visible when they are prised open, but you can also sew these up with sewing thread for extra security.

5. Interlocking

Once you are comfortable weaving separate blocks side by side, you can start to think about linking the different sections of weft together as you weave.

This process can be slower and much more challenging. The link between each weft needs to be positioned carefully in order to keep the smoothest possible line, and you need to avoid pulling them too tightly.

Nevertheless, this is an important technique to master if you want to weave a rug design with continuous vertical lines running up the warp. Any weaving with a design that runs up the warp instead of across it is in danger of becoming unstable, with the sections buckling, overlapping or generally coming apart.

Interlocking is an excellent way to ensure the structural integrity of your rug, while at the same time allowing you to explore more complex effects.

6. Triangles

Once you’re comfortable with horizontal and vertical lines, you can start to think about creating diagonal slopes.

The triangle is one of the foundational motifs of weaving. Here, each row of weft is woven a little shorter than the one below it, and so a gradual slope starts to form, building up like the steps of a staircase.

Unlike with the vertical lines, you won’t have to worry about gaps opening up between weft sections. Instead, the separate sections will lock together on the loom, creating a solid textile.

Triangles and diagonal slopes are also visually impactful, drawing the eye inward and onward. Think about the effect they can create in your rugs, whether it’s guiding the viewer down a passage way or pulling focus into the middle of the room.

7. Diamonds

After you’ve mastered larger and more dramatic diagonal slopes, you can start to think about how smaller diagonal shapes can fit together to create complex patterns in your rug.

I encourage my students to use smaller triangles and diamonds in their rug designs, both for visual effect and for technical practice. Weaving lots of separate sections on the loom at the same time can leave your rug prone to buckling, bulging, or curving out at the sides.

You’ll need to manage your weft carefully to avoid this, and the best way to do that is to weave each section little by little, building them up slowly and gradually.

I also recommend to my rug weaving students that they use a sturdy warp and thick weft when weaving complex patterns like this. Strangely enough, a thick weft is less likely to create bulging, as it will bind the warps in place and keep them straight and flat.

Rug weaving is a slow and demanding craft, and it’s best to keep things simple to start with instead of being overly ambitious. Each one of these seven designs has a different focus, and as you work through them you’ll find you are gradually acquiring the skills you need to weave bigger and better.

Please feel free to try out these designs at home, and let me know how you get on.

But if you’d like more guidance, support, and in-depth video tutorials - my Rug Weaving Online Course is open for enrolment now. Find out more at the link below