AN 1871 "RAG RUG" ARTICLE
This American Farm Journal article from my collection is 140+ years old, and is a delight because it covers so many different types of rugmaking in one place. I've added headings to help clarify the text for modern readers.Through the article, you'll run into some vintage textile terms. Here's some help so they don't throw you--
Thrums: Threads left on a weaving loom after the cloth has been
removed
Crash: A coarse fabric of plain weave made in linen, cotton or jute
Delaines: A lightweight dress fabric of wool, or
wool and cotton
Tow-cloth: A coarse heavy linen
The "American Farm Journal" often included articles on domestic pursuits which were intended for farm wives, who presumably already knew the basic procedures for rug making so the instructions are sketchy at best. The real interest in this article, though is the variety of rugs which were being commonly made just after the civil war. ---Diana Blake Gray, Master Rugmaker
"Rugs"
Very near akin to rag carpets are rugs. At the request of one of our young housekeepers who is not quite prepared to enter on the grave enterprise of covering the whole kitchen floor, but insists to lay something warm and pretty before the stove, we give a few hints with respect to this branch of home manufacture.
Braided Rug
The most easy and obvious method of making a rug is
to braid the rags and sew the braid with strong linen thread in a circular shape until the desired size is obtained. We remember a
very handsome one that we once saw made of red and green delaines. It was two yards long by one wide. The center was composed of alternate
strips of red and green, each strip containing four rows of braid. The border, six inches wide, was made by sewing all around the
center four rows of green braid and eight of red.
Patched Rug with Braided Border
If one has a firm, handsome piece of
cloth to use for this purpose it may be cut into an oval form, bright and handsomely shaped figures sewed on to it, and may be made
the center of a braided rug. Quite a saving in labor and material will be thus affected, and a handsomer rug will be obtained than
if nothing but braid is used.
Frame Woven Rug with Patched Border
A small rug for a door may be easily made by weaving
contrasting colors in the checker-board pattern. Take a strip of cloth of the proper length for your mat, two and half feet long (which
is the width of an ordinary door) and an inch wide. Prepare fifteen of these strips, and tack them smoothly to a board or old table,
making the edges touch each other. Then take the contrasting color and weave it in strip by strip at right angles to the first, until
the whole forms a smooth and close web. With a strong thread fasten the outer edges firmly in place all round, remove the tacks, sew
on the border, and the rug is done. A border of black pieces, cut in semi-circular form and notched evenly with a pair of scissors,
makes a pretty finish.
Knitted and Crocheted Rugs
If one has plenty of old delaines or thin woolen goods, she may tear
them in strips a half inch wide and knit them on coarse wooden needles or crochet them with a large crochet needle, and arrange the
different colors tastefully, sewing or crocheting the knit strips together, and surrounding the whole with a border of fringe or fancy-cut
pieces. This kind of a rug keeps its shape better if lined with a firm piece of crash or bagging.
Sewn Shag with Circular Pieces
Another
way of using up very small pieces of cloth, is to cut them into circular pieces an inch and a half in diameter, fold each once through
the middle, and then through the middle again, so as to form a quarter of a circle, and sew it at the right angle to the foundation,
which should be of some strong, dark-colored cloth. You may arrange the colors according to your taste, so as to make a star in the
middle of the rug, if that figure strikes your fancy, and let the ground work be brown or drab and the border black. This is rather
a tedious way of using up bright colors, but it has a pretty effect, and when well done the work lasts a long time.
Hooked Rug
But
the most durable and handsome article of this kind that we have ever seen is made in the following manner: Take a piece of common
tow-cloth or a good coffee-bag of the size you wish your rug to be; make a hem all around the edge half an inch in width, and sew
it strongly into frames after the manner of a quilt. Upon this foundation mark out with red chalk or a carpenter's pencil the pattern
you wish to work into the rug. This you may take from another rug, or imitate a worsted pattern or a bouquet of flowers in wallpaper.
The rags are to be torn or cut into strips half an inch wide, more or less, according to their thickness of texture, and assorted by their colors, all the reds together, all the greens, and all the blues. The needle or hook with which the rags are to be drawn into the tow-cloth is in shape very much like a big crochet-needle, and sets in a round wooden handle. Any blacksmith can make one. The first one we used was made from an old steel fork; the tines were broken off and the lower part of the shaft filed into the required shape. Having everything in readiness, the foundation, the rags, and the needle, you are to begin by taking the hook in the right hand, and push it from the upper side down where the strip which you hold in your left hand will meet it and be drawn up through the foundation. Let the end be left on the other side a quarter of an inch, then, two or three threads away, draw up the strip again, so that it will form a loop a quarter of an inch long, and so on until the end of the strip is reached, which end you will draw through and leave on the upper side.
Then take another strip and proceed in the same way. The length of the strips is a matter of no importance.
All bright bits of scarlet or blue or crimson, if but an inch in length, may be worked into a rug of this kind. If you have a variegated
border you may use up all grays and browns and neutral tints. It would be well for one who undertakes a rug like this to make a door
mat first and learn how, and the larger mat would be constructed without any difficulty. Where one lives near a carpet factory thrums
may be bought cheap, which, mixed with choice rags, will have very fine effects. A week's industry will enable a housekeeper to lay
before her parlor stove a mat fully as lasting and about as handsome as she could buy at a store for seven or eight dollars.