Using yarn in rug hooking

I've recently finished a challenge rug for my rug hooking group. We were challenged to create a Santa rug—any size, shape, etc. Had to have Santa in it, but Mrs. Claus was excluded!

Although I can't show you the rug, I did want to post a photo of some of the yarns I used in the rug.

The greens which were lovely textures—one kind of furry, and another a bouclé added great interest to the pine tree in the rug. The fluffly white yarn to the right was used for snow as was the Lamb's Pride pictured in the front. The very colorful yarn in the upper left corner is a thick, thin yarn and was used in Santa's coat. The colors were beautiful in this yarn, but it presented some difficulty due to the thickness of some of it. The light blue was used for the sky and is a Lopi bulky weight.

The challenge with using yarn is to keep the gripper strips from pulling it out when moving the rug around on the frame. I finally pinned some pieces of wool to the back of the rug where the yarn was to keep the grippers from "overgripping!!"

I purchased all the yarn from Webs in Massachusetts. They probably wondered what I was going to do with one skein of so many different yarns and colors.

I've also purchased some dyeable yarn from Catnip Yarns and will be using a thick, thin yarn for the background in my next rug. It is dyed in soft pastel shades. I'll show that yarn and pattern when the rug is ready to go.