Braided Rugs and Wool Rugs

Braiding rugs

Braided rugs and wool rugs are two types of recycled rug that can be made at home. They both use recycled fabrics, although wool rugs may also use new woollen yarns instead of recycled wool fabrics. Braided rugs are rag rugs and use old clothing pieces or scraps of fabrics, preferably cotton fabric left over from sewing projects. In Canada in the 1930s and 40s braided rugs were made from worn out silk, lisle, woollen or nylon stockings, these had little additional colour but were wonderfully warm underfoot. It is also possible to mix several different styles of rug together making braided, hooked or prodded, progged and woven as one finished rug.

Braided rugs

It is thought that the art of rug making came to America from Scandinavia with the settlers, but the development of rag rugs into a form of art is almost entirely due to the American influence. Braided rugs are made from three strips of similar weight material plaited together and sewn into a round, oval or square shape. Scraps of fabric may be sewn together into long lengths with the raw edges turned in to hide them or sewn into long tubes with the raw edges on the inside. These rugs are made with only a safety pin to hold the strips of fabric together and a needle and thread to sew them together.

The simplicity of the materials does not mean that every braided rug looks exactly alike, nothing could be further from the truth, the range of colours and the mixture of fabrics and textures play an important part in the look of the finished article. Using a single colour and then mixing it with one more and then an additional colour changes the overall look of the rug completely, as does mixing print, plaid or striped fabrics into the equation.

Wool rugs are made in a variety of different ways, the traditional and most common way is to set up a weaving loom with a complement of warp threads and weave the weft threads with wool yarn. This is done in an industrial setting normally although there are many hand weavers who design their own rugs and weave them.

Tufted rugs

Another way of rug making is tufting rugs made with a high pressure air gun that fires wool threads into a canvas backing. The canvas is tightly stretched on a wooden frame and the design is drawn onto the back of the fabric. The wool, from two or three cones of the same or different colours is threaded into the gun which is then pressed hard against the canvas and the trigger is pressed. The wool is fired and cut at the same time so that the tufts are more or less the same length. When the rug is complete it is backed with a latex liquid which holds all the fibres in place. The front is trimmed to make it completely even, the edges are turned under to the back of the rug and it is backed with a heavy duty hessian fabric. It is possible to produce wonderful rugs of amazing pattern and colour in contemporary designs.

Most rag rug makers would say that the best material to work with is wool and that synthetic fibres should be avoided as they gather dust and dirt and do not wear well. I do not entirely agree with this as tee shirting and fleece fabrics work well in rag rugs. The traditional material was always wool as it was warm and hardwearing and many old wool sweaters, wool jackets and old, worn out wool blankets would have been used to provide warmth for chilly feet in winter.

Woolen rag rugs

These rugs are made using wool cut to a specific length (on a cutting gauge) which is fed through open weave fabric with a latch hook the hook is withdrawn through the loop of wool and the wool is knotted. This is repeated over the whole surface of the rug until it is completely covered.

Braided rugs and wool rugs are often simply and easily made with very little equipment, they can be as contemporary or traditional as you wish.