Here's today's Pintrest inspiration folks, the braided rug. These grey rugs are so lovely! My grandmother always had braided rugs all over her house. They were always colorful and beautiful. I thought it would be an easy project to do, after all it's just braided fabric, right?
You all should know by now that things pretty much never work out the way I think they will. Occasionally they work out better, but sometimes they just don't work out at all.
So, my idea was to use old t-shirts for this project. Our family has millions of them. Some stained, some to little,some too big, some full of rips, and some that you just don't want to be seen in anymore. I am sure you know what I am talking about. You probably have millions of them laying around too.
I used 5 old t-shirts for this project. I spent one night removing the neck ribbing and cutting off the shirt sleeves. Then I ripped them into 4" pieces. We braided them together using big safety pins to hold them at the top and bottom.
I began to coil the braids in a circle and held them in place with more safety pins.
After turning them to the back side, I used heavy quilting thread and a needle to whip stitch the braids together. It's not pretty on the back, but it works to hold them in place.
This was very time consuming as you can imagine.
After sewing, I flipped it over and removed the pins. The next braid was added to the exterior tucking in the raw edges, pinning and sewing as before.
I won't kid you, it was a time consuming project. I can see working on a project like this in front of the fire for weeks and weeks on end, all winter long.
My "rug", actually turned out to be a chair pad. It's just not large enough for someone to wipe their feet on. It would work great for your kitty or puppy to sleep on though. I would guess that in order to make a rug you would need to use 10-20 t-shirts. It would probably be more efficient to sew the 4" strips together in long lengths before braiding. I spent a lot of time hiding the ends of the braids in my project. If you sewed them together first, you could have a smoother rug as well (mine is rather bumpy in spots).
Believe it or not I still may attempt a rug, but it will be a long, long, process. I do like the chair pad, it is very quaint I think.
What's your opinion?
Designer Mom
Ah, this brings back memories of my grandma's house too! She had one that she made that covered an entire floor. It was gigantic. They were all over her house too. I really wanted one or two when she passed away, but she was a lifelong smoker and the smoke stink wasn't coming out of those rugs for anything! (-: You did a very nice job on yours!
ReplyDelete