I've always wanted to make a braided rug. So I decided to do it with my Colonial Days class. Here's the start of the kids' projects today, during the braiding process. The strips are 1" wide and about 3' long. For my rug, I'm using full length strips (about 6'), but they tend to tangle during braiding and I thought the kids would have an easier time with a shorter strip (plus that size is just about right for making a coaster, which was our goal for today). J is second from the right in this photo, if anyone is trying to identify him. 
Using safety-pins, I had the kids attach their strips to a body pillow to make a stable group work station with enough elbow room for each child (there were 10 in class today, this easily could have accommodated 12). It worked great! Here's J's braid in progress. He, along with the rest of the boys and a couple of the girls in class, had never braided before, but they all picked up on it very quickly. (The kids in class range from nearly 8 to 11.)
Then we began coiling and sewing the braid to itself. Here's J's work, coming right along. He's never sewn with a real needle and thread before, but he picked it up really easily and did quite well with it. Most of the kids did really well, once we got them going. A couple of the girls had experience with sewing before and were able to help out some of the other kids as they completely their projects early. I selected a button-hole thread for this, to make it a bit sturdier. The key to making a flat rug is to work on a solid flat surface, so we sewed at a table.
One of the students selects more rag strips to take home to attach to her project and make it larger, while her mom admires the work she did in class. Some suggested items to make from our core project were a set of matching coasters, a hot-mat, a chair-mat, a pet bed, or, if anyone feels particularly ambitious, a rug.
A finished coaster from class.I have about 8 hours in my rug (pictured at the top of this post), I'm thinking I'll be in about the 40 hour range before it's actually looking more like a rug and less like a sample...but I do plan on finishing it, hopefully by the end of the semester so the kids can see what is possible with this project.
2 comments:
You are inspiring me to take the one apart that i started with some of Kai's tattered favorite clothes. Some how i went from doing an oval to a round and it was folding up like a bowl. I need to complete this project so i think tomorrow i will take apart what i started and start once again ;)
You need to be really careful if you're using stretchy jersey material not to stretch it as you braid and sew, otherwise it'll bowl up like that on you. My rugs are being made with cotton sheeting, so there's no stretch to it, making it much easier to get a flat rug.
Good luck with your project! :)
Post a Comment