Saturday, July 12, 2008

My First Rag Rug

One of the moms in my group, Fabulous Artistic Moms of Etsy, asked if I would make her a rag rug. I had never made one before, but it looked like something fun to try, and I am always up for a challenge, especially if fabric is involved.

When I was a little girl, my twin sister, my older sister and I all went to my grandmother's house after school. My grandmother, who could probably have crocheted in her sleep, taught me how to crochet. It's been a while since I've picked up a hook, but it was like riding a bike, tough to forget. I grabbed some yarn to refresh my memory before starting with fabric. Once I felt comfortable, I grabbed some fabric strips that I had stashed in a box and got to work. I used three different methods of attaching new strips. I wanted to see which I liked the best.

The Vintage Chica has lovely tutorial for crocheting rag rugs. The way she suggests to cut the fabric into strips is what I consider the first method of joining the strips. You simply cut a piece of fabric alternating which side you start from and stopping an inch short of the end each time. The result is a long strip of fabric. However, with this method there are rectangular pieces that stick out a little. She also suggests to tie the fabric strips together when you come to a new piece, but I wasn't sure if I liked the knots showing - I know, they are on the backside.
This is a closeup photo of the backside. The green pieces sticking up are the rectangular pieces at the end of the fabric when cutting strips. Then in the middle and at the end, you can see the knots by the pink and blue fabrics. However, you can't see where the fabric changed using the slit method, referenced below.

So, I searched a bit more online. I found LauraJane's YouTube Video on preparing fabric strips. She uses the "slit method." Of the three methods, I liked the look of this one the best. You simply cut small slits in the fabric at the ends and loop a strip into the slit of its own opposite end. See the link for the video. She shows it very well.

Here is a picture of the finished mini rag rug. It was lots of fun to make and I am going to go ahead and make one for my team member.

5 comments:

Sew Bettie said...

The rug looks great! I love your color choices.

Anonymous said...

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ws051117 said...

Beautiful rug! I've been wanting to try rug making for a while and now I'm more inspired!

Anonymous said...

It's beautiful! I just commented in another post that I wanted to see the finished project, now here it is, lol! It came out great.

Carrie
(Etsy- TigerlilyStudio)

Unknown said...

Thanks so much for sharing this. That slit joining technique is brilliant! I'm going to try this :-)