Rag Rug Project

For a month or so now I have been in the process of making a rag rug for my daughter's new bedroom, which she will be moving into once we get what is our current spare room renovated for her.  It is a bigger room and she desperately needs more space as she gets older and her current bedroom has now been outgrown.

I got the idea for a rag rug from a combination of blog reading and it featuring on Kirsty's Vintage Home programme on tv.  As a consequence I decided to have a go myself as it looked quite easy.  I wasn't sure where to get the hessian required for the project but stumbled across a hessian garden sack for sale in Lidl and so bought that for £4 and cut it up to use for the rug.  It has worked out quite well so far although I still have quite a bit of work to do to finish it and am currently running out of fabric as it has used far more than I thought it would to complete the work so far.  It is quite a large rug as I used one whole side of the sack.

The fabric used has mostly been old quilt covers or polycotton sheeting fabric, which has been purchased from eBay, jumble sales or secondhand and has been quite inexpensive.  I realise that the whole point of a rag rug is to use rags you have to hand, my daughter however, did have a specific colour palette in mind, which out of my vast collection of fabric, I had none of.  Perhaps dyeing other fabrics might have been a thriftier option, lets call it a learning curve.

My daughter and partner were both quite sceptical at first but as it has developed they have admitted to being pleasantly surprised at how it is turning out.  It is not an intricate design but I think it looks quite nice and would happily step out of my bed onto it every morning.  Here's a photo what it looks like at the moment which will give you some idea of what it will be like when it is finished.  (Apologies for the quality of the picture but it has been quite a leap for me to actually post one.  Speaking as a relative technophobe, I'm grateful that I've actually managed to work out how to do it.)

The project itself has taken quite a while to reach the stage that it is at now, but I have quite enjoyed it as it has been quite therapeutic to work on something quite simple whilst watching tv on an evening.  I fashioned a rugging tool for pushing the fabric through the hessian by cutting one leg off a dolly peg and fashioning a point on the other, so it cost me nothing.  I must admit though that I did buy a small tool for cutting the fabric to size on eBay, which cost just a few pounds, but has been very useful.  I'm hoping to finish it in the next few weeks in time to go in her new room.  It is very soft underfoot and I'm hoping it wears reasonably well, if she doesn't like it it's going in my bedroom.