Area Rugs Crafts (02)

Making Braided Rugs
This rug-maker chronicled her rug-making progress during the winter season of 2003 and 2004. He or she made braided rugs out of woolen fabrics found at thrift stores, and in the house. You can peruse the pictures in the gallery, as the rug-maker gives tips and tricks and guides you through her own rug-making hobby. A wide variety of rug-making concepts are easily presented here, with pictures that illustrate the production.

Making a Penny Rug
This Web site features a free penny rug making pattern. You have to e-mail the homepage author for details. This penny rug candle mat was made with over dyed wool in tweed and solids on a fulled wool felt background. With 16 tongues, or pen wipes, it measures 9 1/4 inches square and is lined with homespun. The main page includes other penny rug designs and more information about folk crafts.

Unsewn Braided Rugs
This Web site gives a time-honored traditional feel to rug making, as one rug-maker shares tips that her grandmother used when making braided rugs. She calls it Grandma’s Four-Strand Braided Rug, as her grandmother showed her a way to interlock the rows of braid, which eliminates the process of sewing the rug together, and it also gave her better color control when it came to which scraps would show. The rugs are made from inexpensive cotton or blended fabric scraps, so they don't cost much to make and are washable. The article touches on what tools you need, the techniques to use, how to braid and how to keep a rug flat while braiding it.

Rug Hooking Tips and Tricks
Snippets is the name of this Web site section. It includes tips and tricks for rug hookers as well as patterns. There are helpful rug-hooking how-to tips and more here, and it comes out regularly. In one issue, she focuses on tessellations, which are interlocking, geometric shapes that repeat without overlapping or leaving spaces, forming a continuous pattern. Squares, hexagons, and triangles are examples of common tessellating motifs and each can be modified to form an infinite variety of shapes that tessellate.