Our Kaleidoscope Rug Hessian is a pre-printed, pre-hemmed 100 x 100cm rug backing designed to make starting your next rag rug simple, creative and enjoyable. Featuring a bold patchwork design filled with geometric shapes, abstract motifs and playful patterns, it’s a wonderfully versatile project that works beautifully with the rug hooked (loopy), short shaggy and locker hooking rag rug techniques. While you can use the longer proggy / shaggy technique, much of the finer pattern detail will be lost, so it’s not one we’d personally recommend for this design unless you're going to trim your pile shorter at the end.
Originally created as a locker hooked rug for our book Rag Rug Techniques for Beginners, Kaleidoscope quickly became one of the most requested designs we’ve ever shared. Due to its popularity, we’ve now released it as a full-sized pre-printed hessian so you can recreate it at home in your own colours and style.
Is this design suitable for beginners?
Absolutely! The beauty of a rug is that there is no assembly at the end. The rug is divided into individual patchwork-style squares, making it an excellent choice for those who are a bit newer to rag rug making. You can approach the project one section at a time, experimenting with colour combinations and techniques as you go, without feeling overwhelmed by the overall design.
Each piece comes fully hemmed and ready to rag rug, so there’s no sewing needed before you begin. Just choose your fabrics or yarns, pick up your tools, and start making.
As with all our Ragged Life hessian, this is a medium weave (10HPI), which makes it ideal for use with a rug hook, spring tool or locker hook. And because it comes pre-hemmed, there’s no fiddly machine sewing to get in the way of your creativity.
What should I do about fabric?
Our original locker hooked version of this rug was made using a mixture of cut up clothing and textile offcuts - everything from jersey, lycra and cotton to fleece, flannelette, chiffon and more - all in bright contrasting shades. We did however use Recycled Sari Silk Ribbon in some of the squares, which is a great material to work with if you're looking for specific shades to get you started.
If you're looking to make a fully woollen rag rug (as is traditional here in the UK) then it would take approximately 9 x 250g balls of our Ragged Life Woollen Blanket Yarn to rug hook the entire 100 x 100cm rug.
The beauty of Kaleidoscope is that there’s no “right” colour palette - go bright and bold, soft and tonal, retro-inspired or completely monochrome. Every finished rug will look different, making it a fantastic project for experimenting with colour and texture.
And, finally, please note: Kaleidoscope is a limited edition print, so once it’s gone, it’s gone. Grab yours while you can and get in touch if you have any questions at all...
