Hand-Made Rugs

Hand-Made Ru^s THE wide-spread interest in handicraft which the arts and crafts movement has aroused has revived old time in- dustries. Our great grandmothers and our grandmothers have handed down to us these simple crafts, and a revival of them under newer ideals should call out general at- tention and prove a valuable ad- dition to modern home making. '"PHESE crafts should appeal to the amateur because they re- quire only simple materials and equipment. The left-overs and cast-offs of a household will often prove an ample supply. The tools are also of the simplest. Few articles of home furnishing are more useful or decorative than a well-made and attractive rug. And among the interesting tech- niques which have been revived from the old time crafts are nu- merous hand-made rugs. These are the braided rug, the scalloped rug, the knitted rug, the crocheted rug, the hooked rug, the needle- woven rug, and the colonial rag rug. All of these rugs fall into two divisions, according to the manner of making. In the first division are rugs made with the simplest hand tools and without anything approaching machinery. The braided rug, the scalloped, the crocheted, the tufted and knit- ted rugs are in this class. The hooked and needle-woven rugs lead from this division to the more mechanically developed rug, the colonial rag rug. HTHE only tool used in making ■• the braided and scalloped rug is the sewing needle. The cro- cheted and knitted rugs are made with the crochet hook and the knitting needles respectively. In this division the rugs are all made without a frame. The hooked rug which follows them in point of development is the first of the hand-made rugs to be made on a frame. The only other tool used in making the hooked rug is the hook or needle from which it gets its name. gECAUSE the method of mak- ing these old-time rugs is so simple, their design must corres- By GLEN J. BEELEY pond in type, for without ap- propriate design these old-time rugs cannot be beautiful. Even technical perfection cannot make an attractive rug if the element of good taste is lacking. The beginner is likely to fail through over-ornamentation, and technical knowledge has a restrain- ing influence in the use of ornament for it teaches what to leave out just as discriminating taste will teach what to use. Handicraft is beautiful only when ornamentally restrained, and meaningless decoration im- pairs its usefulness. The slogan of the handicraft worker is to make the useful beautiful, for "that which is thoroughly fitted to its use is nearly always beauti- ful." HTHE practical worker uses only the type of design which har- monizes with the process by which the rug is made, and does not indis- criminately imitate the character of another rug. Any ornamental feature applied to a problem in handicraft must be intimately related to the special structure of each particular type. For example, the most distinc- tive feature of the braided rug is developed from the manner in which the three strands of braid are arranged, for by braiding to- gether two strands of a darker color with one of a very much lighter color a characteristic pat- tern develops when the braids are sewed together in circular rows. By emphasizing this feature in the design the rug gets a charm pe- culiarly its own and becomes through a technical feature, a rug distinctive in appearance. A NOTHER and similar example ^^ is found in the hooked rug. This is made by filling up a foun- dation of burlap with loops of cloth. These strips may be either of cotton, wool or silk, but what- ever the material used they repre- sent a very coarse thread, and with coarse thread, a design with a great deal of detail cannot be car- ried.. The most appropriate de- sign for a hooked rug is one with large spaces of different colors in the same degree of tone value. To illustrate, there could be a color scheme in three colors, blue, green and gray. These colors must be present in approximately equal amounts and in the same degree of tone. The blue and green should be used for the fig- ures of the pattern, while the gray should come in as the background. An outline of black and one of white may be added to relieve any monotony. These outlines sur- round all the figures and separate them from the background. To attempt a more detailed treatment in a hooked rug would not be successful. XJOOKED rugs are made from ^ cotton, wool, or silk. Very successful materials for hooked rugs which give a beautiful effect are silk and rayon cut from hose and underwear. The material is first dyed and then cut round and round, each strip being about % to one inch wide. The foundation is first stretched on a wooden frame. It is made of burlap or onion sacks. The principal technical feature of the rug is the hooking of the strips of material into a foundation, where the collective loops form the textile. The loops are crowd- ed in between the meshes of the burlap and held by pressing one against the other. HTHE woolen rug is clipped after ■■ it is hooked. Clipping is an improvement for the color in the flannel loop deepens when it is cut, and becomes velvety. Another way to add variety of tone value in the surface of the rug is to dye the cotton and woolen strips somewhat unevenly. A cotton rug is not clipped because it only frays, and fraying would weaken the texture of the rug. The summer time is an ideal time for such work. If you have never made a rug of the sort de- scribed above, try one this year, and thereafter you will find it a simple matter to make use of old silk underwear and hosiery in the creation of useful, attractive rugs. Read The Craft of Rug-making, by Amy Hicks.