Rag Rug

by Ashley Weeks Cart

Finally! The rug I started for the girls’ bedroom MONTHS ago is finished! It’s not technically a rag rug, as I am no sewer. Instead, I made balls of fabric yarn and crocheted an oval rug. But it is definitely inspired by the aesthetic of a rag rug.

I used old, stained white sheets and fabrics I had lying around the house for its creation. I dyed the sheets bright colors and rotated between the fabrics to create the rainbow explosion you see above. I especially like that I was able to incorporate the fabrics we’ve used throughout the redesign into the rug. The center of the rug is the scraps of the umbrella fabric from the love seat cover. And the outer border of the rug is the scraps from the material we used to upholster Addison’s floor bed.  It ties it all together nicely.

 

Materials:
Old sheets and fabrics
Scissors
Jumbo crochet hook

Directions:
1. Cut fabrics into 1″ thick stripes.
2. To make seamless fabric yarn, attach stripes end to end, snip a small hole, and thread the top sheet through the bottom and pull.

3. Grab your crochet hook and get to crocheting all that fabric yarn. I started by chaining 5 stitches and then single crochet stitching into each side of the chain, adding three stitches at the top of each side of the chain. I then went round and round in this fashion using a single crochet stitch, and adding three stitches on the round corners of each end. It took far longer than I anticipated and was particularly unwieldy at the end. But well worth it, methinks! And it was an amazing way to put all that fabric to use!

Photos: Ashley Weeks Cart