An Introduction to Rag Rugs: Creative Recycling

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!