Creating a Mirror Rug with a Rug Tufting Gun

1. Welcome!: So you've been rag testing for a while now, and you really want to add a little bit of zing and character to your rugs. Just add something a little bit new and spice things up. In that case, creating a mirror rug is the absolute perfect next step. Hi, I'm Charlie. I'm a textile and watercolor artist from Atlanta, Canada, and I specialize in rainbow colored animal artwork. And today I want to walk you through, how to create a mirror rug. This is an intermediate level class, and I assume that you've topped at least one rug before. If not, pause this video and check out the link in the description where I linked to my introductory run tufting course where I walk you through the run Tafting creation process all the way from basic safety and run Tift and gun maintenance. Through creating the rug, including the entire process from designing your rug to tufting it out, cleaning it up, backing it, and getting it ready for display. This class is going to focus on the elements that are unique to a mirror rug. When I talk about designing a rug, either focused around the mirror or having the mirror as an accent to the overall design of the rug, I'll cover some tips and best practices for tufting out and carving your rug. I'll show you how to create a carriage for your mirror to add support to your rug and your mirror. And create a very sturdy end product. And then we'll go through adding backing and hanging hardware onto your rug, getting all ready for display. If you have any questions during this class, please leave them down in the discussion section and I'll answer them as quickly as possible. And when you're finished, please be sure to show me your project. I'd love to see what you create. Thank you very much for joining me and enjoy the class. 2. Your Project: The project for this class is create a mirror rug. Remember this is an intermediate level class, so we're not going to be going in depth on how to create a rug using a tufting gun. If you need information on that, please be sure to check out my introductory run tufting course. I'll have linked in the description. In this class, we're going to be discussing designing your rug, including a mirror centric design and also a design where the mirror is a secondary read and supports the overall design of the rug. I'll briefly walk you through the tufting process, including some tips for creating a very professional looking finished here rug, then I'll walk you through step by step how to create a carriage that'll support the weight of your mirror and make your rug extra sturvy. By the end of this class, you'll have a beautiful mirror rug to show off to all your friends and family. And when you're done, please be sure to share your project down in the project section. I'd love to see what you create. 3. Materials: The materials you need for this project are your normal tufting materials. So in my case, I'm using primary backing cloth, lots of yarn, my tufting gun, wood glue as my primary backing glue, scissors, and an electric razor to do my carving. You'll also need foam core or corrugated cardboard, or I can use a light wood, like Masonite, if you prefer. We'll be using hot glue and whether or not you use backing fabric is completely up to you. I'll be using felt for my backing fabric. I'll also be using two D rings as our hanging hardware. And, of course, a mirror. I'll have a list of all these materials down in the class description. 4. Prepping The Mirror: Before we start designing our piece, the first thing we need to do is figure out the size of our mirror. I don't do that. I'm just going to remove this mirror from its backing. Looks like it was held down mostly with glue. Pretty easy to remove. Alright, so this shows me what I have to work with. Our objective at this step is just to get the measurements of the mirror. So I'm gonna do that first before removing it. I see the edges nice and cleanly. And I'm gonna say that is about 16 ". By about 12 ". I'm just going to write that down. We won't need to remove the mirror from the frame right this second. But since we're already working on it, I think it's best to remove that all in one step. So with this glue, I'm just going to use my knife here, see if I can pull that up a bit. Depending on your mirror, you might have tacks, nails, staples or some other holding implement in the back of the mirror. So just have a few tools ready just in case. I'm going to be really careful not to put too much pressure on the back of the mirror in case you crack it. Measuring might take a bit longer if you have an organically shaped mirror or something that is more circular. But if you're working with a rectangle, and you're probably going to get a standard size. Not too worried about the glue that's here that was holding on the back. But if that peels up easily, that's great. But if not, can actually leave that on for when the rug is being created, and basically put this in, we'll cover that up. Now that we have the dimensions, we can go ahead and start sketching out our designs. 5. Designing Your Rug: A few general principles to keep in mind when designing your mirror rug is that the mirror is going to be the focal point. So you can use it to your advantage by making the mirror the standout element. You also want to either maximize or minimize the amount of contrast in the rest of the rug. If you maximize contrast, then you're going to have a rug that really pops off and attracts a lot of attention. If you minimize contrast, you're going to make the mirror a lot more impactful when someone actually walks up to it and discovers that it's a mirror. And finally, don't be worried so much about the shape of the mirror. It's the size of the mirror that's actually most important. So even if you have a square mirror, you can create a round or organically shaped rug. Need to make sure that the edge of the mirror is obscured by the edge of the window in the rug. Now let me have the exact measurements for our mirror. We can go ahead and sketch out some basic designs. And there are two ways that you can design something around a mirror. So you can either have the mirror be the focal point, and therefore, it takes up most of the rug or is the central element of the rug, or you can have it be an accent and have the rug be the primary focus. So maybe one idea having the mirror as a primary focus might be to make an eye. So I really like cat eyes. So I'll draw the main part of the eye inside and create a pupil. And then we need to design around it. So make this one to tabby, I really enjoy painting tabby cats. Have some lighter bits around here. Darker bits coming out here, maybe a marking here, and then maybe we'll make this an oval rug, just to give it some structure. We're not too worried about having things look perfect just yet, so we're going to refine these sketches. We just want to get the basic idea down. Traw out our basic mirror shape again. So maybe something like a turtle shell. So maybe a sea turtle has a bigger shell over here, smaller shell here, maybe something more like that. And then we can maybe add some details across the shell. And right now I'm just playing with things. So these aren't gonna look great. I'm not too worried about that. We can also play with the placement of a mirror, like how much is covered by rug and how much is exposed later on when we're refining these. So right now we're just generating ideas. Maybe something like a sunset rug. So shape like this. The mirror will be in the bottom, and we'll have the sunset come out gradients. I'm gonna label this one because it's a little bit obtuse what it is. Could be a rainbow, could be a sunset, could be a moon. Who knows? Maybe in terms of a moon, we could have similar like this. Well, the mirror is here, we have the moon there and a bunch of stars around it. We have two ideas that focus on the mirror as a focal point and two ideas that focus on the mirror as a secondary element. So it's a second read. And I think it's pretty good. So once you designed a few ideas that you like, you can go on to refining them. Now that we have a few ideas of what we'd like our rug to look like, it's time to refine those very rough sketches. I'm going to show you how to do this traditionally using paper, but you can also do this digitally. First thing I'm going to do is I'm going to get some paper that's approximately the size that I want my rug to be. So I want to keep the limitations of my frame size in mind. The next thing I'm going to do is place my mirror on the paper and trace around it. So it's going to give me the exact size and shape of the mirror. Now, I've decided that I'm going to go with this cat eye design. So I'm going to use this highlighter to rough out the shape of the design. And then when I'm happy with that, I'm going to go over it with a black marker. Keeping the sketch light, it allows me to change up the design more easily. Of course, if you're doing this digitally, it's very easy to go back and change the design around until you're happy with it. Once I'm happy with the design, I'm going to go ahead and cut that out, and then I'm ready to transfer it to my tufting fabric and get tufting. 6. Creating Your Rug: In this section, I'll be briefly touching on everything you need to know about rug tufting. If you're a rug tufting beginner, and this is your first rug, I highly recommend you go back and watch my first rug tufting introductory course. That'll give you a strong foundation in everything you need to know about rug tufting. Breaking down everything about the rug creating process from designing all the way through to tufting, cleaning, and finishing your rug, including safety tips and some maintenance tips for your gun to keep it in good working order. Once we have our design all sketched out, it's time to transfer it to our backing cloth. If you've created your design digitally or you've scanned or photographed it, then you can use a projector. If you've created your final design on paper like I have, I found the easiest way to transfer the design is to pin it directly to the backing cloth. Remember that if your design has a direction, so you want it facing specifically left or specifically right, then you're going to want to flip your design. For this rug, I'm showing you how to flip your design manually. So the first thing I've done is I've attached the front of my design to the back of my tufting cloth. I'm going to go around to the front of the tufting cloth. This is the good side, the side that you'll see, and I'm tracing that sketch onto the cloth. Once I'm done with that, I'm shining a light through the front side where we've just drawn the sketch out toward the back and then I'm going around to the back and tracing the lines that I see. This will effectively mirror your image for you. Finished rug will be facing the correct direction. Just a quick reminder, here are some tufting tips that I always keep in mind when working on a rug. First, be sure that you always outline the section that you're tufting. So, for example, if I'm working on this stripe, I'm going to go around the outside of the stripe before filling it in. Also, be sure to tuft in the same direction as much as possible. So that means always going up and down or always going side to side. This just ensures that the pile always faces the same direction and doesn't get any ghosting when you clean it. Sure to take your time, especially going around curves. The easiest way I found to go around curves is to slow your gun by just tapping the trigger instead of holding it down consistently. That just slows your gun down a little bit and allows you to take tighter turns. Once you're all tufted out, then it's time for the glue up. I'm using wood glue because it's non toxic, it dries quickly, and it's pretty water resistant, so it's quite sturdy and stands up for a long time. When you're gluing, make sure you go straight to the edge of your backing fabric and a little bit over. That'll ensure that your backing fabric edges don't fray. I'll be leaving my edges raw, so I want to make sure that they're nice and tightly glued up. The last step before attaching your mirror is to make sure that you do all your carving. You want to do this before attaching your mirror, so that way you can lay your rug completely flat. So first, I'm going to shape everything down to level and then I'm going to go around each shape that I want to stand at more prominently and carve a nice little bevel. And once that's done, we can move on to attaching the mirror. 7. Adding The Mirror: And now it's finally time to add the mirror to our rug. So the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to take the backing material. In this case, I'm using foam core, but you can use corrugated cardboard or a light wood like Masonite. And I'm going to place that down on top of my rug and see approximately where I want it to fit. And then I'm just going to lightly tape that down, flip over my rug, and then trace out the negative space. So I'm going to trace out, in this case, the eye of the cat, as well as the edges of the rug. So in this case, where the foam core overhangs the rug. Once I have those measurements traced out, I'm going to carefully lay down the mirror so that it covers the area of the eye. So this is the area of the rug that I want the mirror to pee through. I'm just going to trace around the mirror. I've selected a fairly thick material here because I want to create a carriage. I want to create an indent in this material for the mirror to sit inside. In order to do that, I'm going to take my knife and cut through the top layer of the foam core. This foam core is covered with paper on both sides. I'm just cutting through that top paper layer and a little bit into the foam. In addition to that, I'm also cutting out the edges of the foam core. I want there to be a bit of a margin between the foam core and the edge of the rug. That just allows our back and cloth to attach properly. If you're using something like masonite and you don't want to attach a back in cloth, then you might want to go right to the edge of the rug with your mason. I have my board cut shape, and I've scored the shape around my mirror. I'm going to go ahead and score some more lines into the area where my mirror is going to be recessed. And then I'm just going to use a palette knife and carefully scrape off all the foam and paper within that area. So all I want left is the paper underneath the foam core. If you're using corrugated cardboard, do this exact same way. We're going to be tearing off the upper paper and then tearing out the corrugation in the center, leaving that final layer on the bottom. Once that's all cleaned up, I'm going to take some hot glue and I'm going to put a bead of hot glue all around the edge of the carriage where I'm going to be putting in my mirror and then putting some hot glue inside the carriage, as well. And then I'll be gently putting my mirror inside this frame. Now you might be thinking that this is very light weight, and that is why I've chosen the foam core. You don't have to worry about it being too fragile. That lip that we've just created is going to take most of the weight of the mirror, but we're also going to be attaching both the frame and the mirror itself to the rug using glue. And that's going to add a lot of strength. Once we have the mirror glued into the carriage, going to carefully place the rug over the carriage, and then we're going to start by applying glue around the edge of the rug that touches the mirror. You want to get right to the edge here as much as possible to create a nice, sturdy connection, and then gradually work your way out towards the edge of the rug. If you make a mistake in your placement, you can just peel up your rug, peel up the glue while it's still warm, and then reposition your rug. Make sure you're applying the glue directly over the edges of the mirror once the rug is in place to make sure that there's a strong connection. Once the rug has been glued down to the mirror and the carriage, I'm also going to go back and add a small bead of glue just around the inside of the mirror. And then I'm going to gently push the yarn of the rug down into that glue. And that's just going to make that connection between the rug and the mirror a little bit more seamless, so you don't see the reflection of the underside of the rug in the mirror. I'm going to follow the same procedure for attaching any elements directly to the mirror. So again, we're just going to apply glue to the center and to the edges of the rug and squeeze outward. And then we'll push down the yarn around the edges of the rug to create a clean connection point. Now we're finally to the home stretch. Now we're going to back our rugs and attach some hanging hardware, and it'll be all finished. The first step is to attach the backing fabric. The way I like to do it is to put a bead of glue on the very edge of my rug and then put the fabric down and then squeeze that glue outwards. That ensures the backing fabric gets to the very edge of the rug. Now going around the outside of the rug like this creates a little pocket. So I like to fill in that pocket with glue and get a nice hard press down. When you reach the carriage material, in this case, it's foam core. Make sure you also apply glue liberally here. You want a really strong connection between the backing material and the carriage that's holding your mirror. Once everything's glued down, we're just going to snip off the excess fabric. Once your backing material is glued on your rug and everything's had a chance to cool and harden, we're going to go ahead and sew on the hangers. In this case, I'm using D rings, and I'm just using a little bit of my backing fabric, which is felt to attach the hangers. Now for a normal rug, I just use one piece of felt per D ring. But because this is going to have a mirror on it, I want it to be extra sturdy. I'm going to add two pieces of felt or one piece of felt that's folded over just to make it doubly strong. When I'm sewing, I'm going to go directly through the backing fabric, through the rug tufting fabric and right at the front of the rug. You don't need any particular stitch for this. Just try to be a little bit though. Tend to make two rows of stitches. The only tips to keep in mind while doing this are to make sure that your hanging hardware does not overhang your rug so that it's not visible. And this is why we've added a little bit of a lip between the rug and the mirror carriage. And the second tip is just be cautious that your thread isn't getting caught in the yarn on the front of your rug. It should be easy to nestle it down into the pile of the rug and you won't even notice it. If instead of cardboard or foam core, you've decided to use wood as the frame for your mirror, and you can skip this step and instead attach hangers directly to the wood using screws. Once you have your hangers attached, your project's all done. Congratulations. 8. Wrapping Up: Congratulations on M to the end. At this point, you should have a good idea how to create a mirror rug. Or hopefully you've worked along with me and you've created one of your own. This class covered all the stuff you needed to create a mirror rug, including some tufting tips, some design tips. How to create a carriage for your mirror, and how to put that all together into your final piece. Once you've completed your project, please be sure to share it down in the project section. If you have any questions in the meantime, please be sure to leave them in the discussion section. And if you've enjoyed the class or maybe there's something that you'd like improved on the class, please be sure to leave it down in a review. Your reviews help me polish up these classes and approve it as a teacher. So thank you very much for your input. And thank you very much for watching my class. I hope you had a good time. Have a great day.