Rags To Rugs

Creating a beautiful throw rug from scraps is easy enough for anyone to master. Making Rag Rugs, a collection of 15 original designs from a variety of talented rug crafters, suits the skills of any crafter, from the rawest beginner to the most sophisticated talent. This book shows how to utilize such simple recycled ingredients as leftover fabric, old clothes, and household textiles to create these beloved and time-honored rugs. The techniques are easy to learn, the cost is minimal, and very little special equipment is needed. Each project is accompanied by a detailed "what you will need" list, step-by-step instructions with color illustrations and full-color photographs of the whole rug, and close-up detail that brings the projects to life and makes them easy to achieve. Specification boxes detail the size of the rug and the technique used. The designs in this book are contemporary and fun. The Retro Flower Rug is inspired by the classic flower shapes used by Andy Warhol and Mary Quant in the 1960s. Lavender Field is made from soft woolen blankets dyed in shades of green and mauve to represent lavender flowers, foliage, and surrounding fields. Lavender buds are even sewn into the lining to gently scent the room. A wonderfully rustic Braided Woolly Rug is made from cream and white blankets and black and gray coat and skirt fabrics. All of the basics are covered - from preparing the rags to finishing, cleaning, and caring for the completed rugs. Once crafters have mastered the techniques of hooking, prodding, braiding, and weaving, the next step is to design their own rugs.

Every weaver weaves a rag rug--or two, or three. In this long-awaited book, well-known weaver and teacher Tom Knisely shares his knowledge and expertise in this collection of favorite rag rug patterns.

This invaluable resource for crafters of all ages and experience levels teaches all the skills you need to make inexpensive, sturdy, and beautiful twined rag rugs that will be destined to become treasured heirlooms.

With its beautiful and clear illustrations, this guide to rug weaving is an inspiring journey into a world of dazzling color and eye-catching design. From classic stripes to pattern-woven designs, detailed directions are provided for 45 rugs that represent a wide range of weaving techniques. Beginning with stripe and check weaves in simple tabby, the rugs progress in difficulty to intriguing challenges such as chenille, drall, diamond twill, rag inlay, repp, and rosepath weaves. Creative approaches to materials show how to cut strips from favorite old shirts, sheets, and jeans, and the emphasis throughout is on creative flair, imaginative design, and the pleasure of making a one-of-a-kind rug imbued with memories.

A combination how-to book for weaving rugs with fabric remnants, and a gallery of gorgeous contemporary rugs by some of today’s best designers. This book brings rag rugs out of old country cabins and places them beside the best of contemporary crafts and d�cor. A delight for weavers and nonweavers alike.

Elspeth Jackson reinvents the traditional craft of rag rugging to create contemporary and sustainable homeware items from leftover fabrics. You’ll be amazed at how simple and enjoyable it is to upcycle old and well-loved garments into beautiful rugs, pillows, artworks, bags, and other gifts, using just a few basic tools and some simple techniques. The book is arranged into three chapters: Home includes a selection of projects for fun and easy rugs in a range of colours and styles, as well as a shaggy pillow, draught excluder, wall hanging and chalkboard frame. Gifts has wonderful ideas for unique items that you can make for friends and family, from a clutch purse to flower hair clips and even a brooch. Finally, Seasonal will inspire you to turn your strips of fabric into decorations and gifts to use at certain times of the year, from a rag-rugged heart for Valentine’s Day, to an unusual spring wreath and some gorgeous Christmas baubles. With lavish color photographs and clear, step-by-step instructions and artworks, crafters of all ages will enjoy making these projects. A comprehensive section at the start of the book covers everything you need to know about which fabrics to choose, what tools you will need, and the essential techniques, allowing you to discover how to update this traditional craft with endless possibilities of color and fabric combinations.

Making is good for you. Exploring crafts can be relaxing and therapeutic : the projects in this book are accessible to anyone who is inspired to recycle old clothes and textiles into unique, decorative, useful projects. Our forbears improvised tools to recycle their worn clothes - mostly dark suiting or mill waste if they lived near a mill. Usually they made mats for their cold floors or as draft excluders across doors. Nowadays you can choose from so many more colors and textures - painting with rags! Try one project or more. You will be able to use the techniques to design and make your own one-off items for your home or as hand-made gifts. The techniques here are traditional and simple - you will be surprised at how drab fabrics become transformed. Simple designs work best and you can even improvise as you work. If a fabric runs out, then use another - I call that organic design! Hooking is the best technique for pictorial detail and different techniques could be combined for original wall art. Historically, rugs were made by several people sitting round a horizontal frame with the children cutting the pieces of rag which were prodded into the hessian (burlap) backing to make a shaggy mat. There is a prodded project (for purists) but you can also achieve the same effect without a frame by progging, which can be done on table or thigh (carefully). Warning – this craft can be addictive!

This comprehensive "natural history" of a traditional art form honors more than a hundred contemporary Finnish American rag rug weavers and loom builders, whom the author has met and interviewed during more than two decades of research, mostly in Michigan's western Upper Peninsula. As in the classic Finnish American rag rug, Lockwood weaves a colorful yet subdued, artfully lasting, and deeply symbolic tribute that reclaims remnants of past Michigan Traditional Arts Program productions in a fresh composition that will appeal to rag rug artisans, Finns and Finnish Americans, scholars, and a broad public alike. Janet C. Gilmore, Independent Folklorist & Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison --