rag rugs

[c-side]

I recall it being a pastime - something to do in the dark winter evenings in the days before TV.  It could well have been a necessity in some households but not all.

It sprang from the old motto of 'waste not, want not'.  Bykerlads is right - when a garment could not be used for anything else it became part of a rug.  After all the buttons etc. had been removed and saved for re-use, of course.

I don't know who made our frame - possibly my grandfather but it could have been 'shop bought'.  The hessian could be purchased with a pattern already stamped on it.  I can remember one with a big red flower in the middle but you could buy plain hessian and draw your own pattern or just put the colours in randomly to give a mixed effect.

Like Bykerlads my childhhood was mostly in the 1950s - born in 1947.

I think I might know where there is an old progger but it doesn't belong to me.

Christine

[waiteohman]

Hello

I remember one of those rugs in our house. My grandmother and mom used our cloth diapers that were no longer needed. The cloth had been dyed a few different colours, cut into strips, stitched into long lengths and braided into the rug. Gran's left Scotland as a child with her parents and siblings. Her mother's side were miners and father's gardeners. In Canada she lived through the depression of the 30s and WWII with a husband overseas and raising her two small children. You made the most out of things you had.

Linda

[bykerlads]

Raggybaggylin- To answer your questions:
I was born in 1949.
 My family were not manufacturers in the sense of being textile mill owners but most of my ancestors were clothiers/weavers of textile workers right back to the 1700's.
The cloth I remember being used was the stuff that men's suits were/are made of- fine worsted woollen.
I'll have a look at a memoir that my late father wrote about his childhood which talks about rug-making and get back to you with the details. My recollection is that rug-making was partly a necessity but also a social + annual routine passtime in Winter.
I think a bit of rug-making was still done when I was a child but it was done with wool onto a canvas backing with holes- a tool with a wooden handle and a kind of hook with a little flap was used - amazing what one remembers from all those years ago!!

[aghadowey]

Not sure how widespread your interests are but the last post reminded me of the looped wool rugs on hessian that I would have helped make in the 1960s (on an island off the New England coast). My grandmother, who had grown up on another island in a different area talked about making rag rugs as a child (as her mother had done in Canada in the 1870s) so I expect it was a very common thing.

[bykerlads]

As promised the bit about rag rugs from my dad's memoir, written on the eve of the new millenium, recounting life over 3/4 century, from his birth in 1926. He gives many, many details and invites the younger readers to ponder the question-"the good old days?were they?"
"Rugs were plentiful and homemade from old clothing, always wool, cut up into pieces 4 inches long and 1 inch wide. These were inserted into a canvas type backing using a pointed piece of wood.These rugs were warm and long lasting.They were known as "pegged rugs".They were used all over the home, the more colourful as heaarthrugs, the plainer ones as doormats. Most families shared the use of a rug-making frame on which the canvases were held taut, enabling rugs of all sizes to be made. The frame was used by relatives in turn, especially duringthe winter months."
Dad's account runs to about 100 pages in total and really makes one realise that we all ought to write about our pasts - the domestic side of life is so often neglected by historians and yet trells us such a lot about ourselves and our families.

[c-side]

I think a bit of rug-making was still done when I was a child but it was done with wool onto a canvas backing with holes- a tool with a wooden handle and a kind of hook with a little flap was used

These days it's called latch hook work.  I still do some now from time to time but mostly lighter weight things like cushion covers - just finished one a few weeks ago.

How wonderful to have those memoirs!  I wonder whether those rugs were called pegged rugs because they used broken pegs to make the wooden tool?  That's what they did here.  The old style peg (the kind you made peg dolls with) broke regularly.  The remaining bit would be sharpened to a point and used to make the mats

Christine

[tomkin]

 How strange. I was talking to some one today about making

   these rugs and now I've spotted this topic.

    This is what we used to do.  We would gather all the old coats,

     trousers etc. that we could find. Many of these had been passed down

     from family member to family member until they were no longer of any use.

     Coats were normally better because the material was thicker.  The material was

    cut into strips about 1/2" wide and a couple of inches long. A good quality hessian

     sack would be obtained from one of the local greengrocers ( usually by begging and

     and looking shy and coy.)  We called these tatie sacks.  The sack would be cut down

     one long side and along the bottom . This would the open up to a fairly large hessian

      rectangle.  All the edges would then be doubled over and sewn to prevent fraying.

     ( p.s. They were called tatie sacks because that's how potato's were delivered in bulk)

     Then a few wooden clothes pegs were sacrificed to make the brodding tools.

      One of the legs of the peg would be cut off and the other sharpened to a point.

      Starting at one corner, the peg would be pushed through the hessian making a hole.

     One of the strips would be fed through that hole for about half its length.  Another hole would be

     made at he side of that and the other half fed through. This would be repeated and repeated.

     Several people could work on the rug at the same time. When you got a bit more skilful you would

      make the hole and push the strip through at the same time by using the point of the peg.

      We would also randomly select different colours and textures so that the rug didn't have a pattern.

     But as you got more skilful then you could introduce a variety of patterns into your rug making.

     The problem with that, of course, is that you needed a fairly large amount of strips, of the colours

    for the required pattern.

        The sacks we used were of a very tight weave. If it wasn't , then it would be useless as it

       wouldn't hold the strips.

           Tomkin

         Happy days

    P.S. Later we got posh and made ReadiCut rugs.   I don't think that we ever finished one,

     and I guess that you could have fitted the whole house with carpets for the price of one

     of those things.

     

[tomkin]

    It would appear that Readicut rug kits are still available.

    Our American Cousins call it Latch Hook rug making.

     Click on link:-

    www.shillcraft.co.uk/

  Tomkin

[copperbeech5]

I have a very modest rag rug a shaggy one  in shades of mauve that I was given by and old lady years ago. 

But if anyone wants to look at fab rugs look at this old couples work - Lewis and Louisa Creed, they really are superb!

http://www.louisa-creed-ragrugs.co.uk

Copperbeech5