Rug Tufting Materials 101: Yarn, Monk’s Cloth, and What You’ll Actually Use

If you’ve booked your first rug tufting class — or you’re still deciding whether to try it — there’s a good chance you’ve got questions about what actually goes into making a tufted rug. What kind of fabric do you tuft into? What’s the difference between yarn types? Do you need to bring anything yourself?

This guide breaks down the core materials behind rug tufting in plain language, so you walk into your first session already understanding what’s in front of you — and feeling a little more confident picking colours and yarn types when the time comes.

The Backing Fabric: Monk’s Cloth

Every tufted rug starts with a base fabric, and in nearly all modern tufting, that fabric is monk’s cloth. It’s a loosely woven, breathable cotton fabric with a visible grid pattern, and that grid isn’t just decorative — it’s functional. The evenly spaced weave gives your tufting gun a consistent surface to punch through and helps you keep your design lines straight, especially when you’re just starting out.

A few things worth knowing about monk’s cloth:

• It’s stretched tight on a frame before you start. This tension is what allows the tufting gun to push yarn through cleanly without the fabric bunching or shifting.
• The grid acts as a built-in guide. Many studios pre-print or trace a design directly onto the cloth, and the grid helps you follow curves and straight edges more precisely.
• It’s sturdy, but not indestructible. Because the weave is looser than most other fabrics, monk’s cloth can fray at the edges if it’s handled roughly, which is part of why most first-timers work within a securely framed, pre-stretched setup rather than loose fabric.

If you ever hear someone mention “primary cloth” or “primary backing” in the tufting world, they’re referring to the same category of fabric — different suppliers sometimes use slightly different terminology, but the function is the same.

The Yarn: Where Most of Your Design Decisions Happen

Yarn is where the creative choices really live. Unlike backing fabric, which is fairly standardized, yarn comes in a wide range of materials, weights, and finishes — and the type you choose affects both how your finished rug looks and how it feels underfoot.

Acrylic Yarn

By far the most common yarn used in tufting workshops, and for good reason. Acrylic yarn is:

• Affordable, which matters when a rug can use a significant amount of yarn
• Available in an enormous range of colours, making it easy to build out a detailed, vibrant palette
• Durable and easy to clean, which makes it practical for rugs that will actually get walked on

Wool Yarn

Wool is a step up in both cost and texture. It has a naturally soft, plush hand-feel and tends to hold its shape and colour well over time. Many people choose wool for statement pieces or gifts, since it has a more premium look and feel than acrylic. The tradeoff is cost and slightly more careful maintenance.

Yarn Weight and Thickness

Yarn weight (how thick or thin the strand is) affects the texture of your finished piece:

• Thicker yarns create a more pronounced, chunky pile — great for bold, graphic designs
• Thinner yarns allow for more detailed, refined patterns, but generally take longer to fill in

For a first-time class, most studios use a consistent, beginner-friendly yarn weight so you’re not managing that variable on top of learning the tufting motion itself.

Cut Pile vs. Loop Pile: The Two Main Tufting Styles

Beyond fabric and yarn, the style of tufting changes the texture of your finished rug significantly.

Cut pile uses a tufting gun that cuts the yarn as it’s punched through, leaving soft, fluffy strands standing upright — similar to a plush shag rug. This is the more common style for beginner classes because it’s forgiving and produces an immediately satisfying, textured result.

Loop pile leaves the yarn in uncut loops, creating a smoother, more structured surface — closer to a Berber-style carpet. Loop pile tends to be more durable underfoot and gives designs a cleaner, more defined edge, but it requires a slightly different gun technique.

Some tufted pieces combine both — using loop pile for outlines and cut pile for fill — to create texture contrast within a single design. This is a more advanced technique, but it’s worth knowing it exists if you ever want to push your second or third project further.

The Tufting Gun: The Tool That Ties It All Together

While the tufting gun isn’t a “material” in the traditional sense, it’s worth understanding briefly since it directly interacts with your fabric and yarn choices. The gun feeds yarn through the monk’s cloth at a controlled depth and speed, and different guns are calibrated for either cut pile or loop pile work (some newer models can switch between both). For a first-time class, you won’t need to worry about choosing or calibrating a gun yourself — your instructor handles setup — but understanding what it’s doing helps demystify the process.

Finishing Materials: What Holds Your Rug Together

Once the tufting itself is done, a few additional materials go into finishing the piece so it’s durable enough to actually use:

• Fabric glue or latex adhesive, applied to the back of the piece to lock the yarn in place and prevent shedding
• A secondary backing fabric, glued over the adhesive layer to fully seal and protect the back of the rug
• Trimming tools, used to clean up any uneven yarn ends and give cut-pile designs a smooth, even surface

This finishing stage is what transforms a tufted piece from “yarn held in place by tension” into a genuinely durable rug or wall hanging that can handle regular use.

What You’ll Actually Use in a Beginner Class

If you’re heading into your first session and wondering what’s realistically in front of you, here’s the short version: a pre-stretched monk’s cloth canvas on a frame, a curated selection of acrylic yarn colours, a cut-pile tufting gun, and finishing materials handled by your instructor at the end. You won’t need to source or bring any of this yourself — the appeal of a studio class over a DIY kit is that all of these material decisions are already made for you, so you can focus entirely on your design and technique.

Ready to Put These Materials to Use?

Understanding the materials behind rug tufting doesn’t just satisfy curiosity — it makes your actual class experience smoother, since you’ll already understand why the fabric is stretched the way it is, why your instructor recommends a certain yarn weight for your design, and what’s happening when the gun punches through the cloth.

Once you’ve got the basics down, the best way to really understand them is to get your hands on a gun and try it yourself.