Rag Rugs

When I was young, my mother made rugs.


She made them out of all the left-over fabric from sewing and all of our worn-out cotton clothes.



I heard the story of how she got started making rugs. It started just before my baby brother was born.





When Mother was pregnant, she would go to the doctor's office to sit and wait to see him - I guess they gave her a day but not a time for an appointment. Some times she was there for hours. While she waited she chatted with other women who were also expecting babies and waiting in the office. One of those women became a close friend. Her name was Kay Minnich. Kay was very creative - she even had a loom in her living room for her weaving. Mother had been a knitter and knew how to crochet, but she was too nervous to do really fine work just then. So Kay suggested that she make crocheted rugs and Kay would get her started. Doing the first line down the middle was the hardest part, so Kay would do that. Then Mother could crochet strips of cloth around and around to make round or oval rugs.



So Mother began making rugs. First she would decide what was too worn out to wear or use. Then she would rip it into strips about two inches wide. The next step was to sew all the strips together on the sewing machine , carefully matching the sides and ends. The rolled up balls of strips went into the ironing bag and when the clothes were ironed, Mother would pull one out and carefully turn the edges in and iron them flat.




The balls went into a basket. They were ready to be made into a rug. Now Mother would sit on the rug and crochet around and around, adding stitches and sometimes taking out stitches to make it lie flat.





Wasn't that a lot of work for a rug?



I didn't think about that. It was just something that mothers did.





She usually had several rugs going at the same time. They would have different colors in them, so she could decide which one a new fabric would fit best.




The rugs made great places to play.


Because they went around and around my brother would find roads in them and make his trains and trucks go round and round.


Because they had holes in between the stitches I could stand up my toy horses in them.

Because it was so round, Joe B. and I played a game in which we crawled round and round the big rug in the living room and pretended we were "babies in mother's stomach". We didn't know a lot about anatomy. Or babies. Mother did not care for this game and made us stop when she found us playing it.







What I loved was finding bits of favorite dresses or shirts in the rugs.

Every rug had lots of stories in it.








One rug was made just for me when I was about 10 or 11 years old. It had a lot of my two favorite colors, pink and green. I thought pink and green was the perfect color combination.


See the dark stripe in there? That fabric was left over after my pink-and-green plaid dog was made.







It was at the school carnival that I saw the stuffed dogs with the button eyes and the floppy ears. I wanted one. I wanted it very badly. I suspect that I must have made a scene because I didn't get one. Not then. Later my mother had me pick out a fabric that I liked. She took it to the lady who made them for the school carnival and had this wonderful pup made just for me.

He flopped in all sorts of cute ways and I could set him in all sorts of positions to go along with whatever story I made up about him. I could make his little tail wag, I could make his ears cover his eyes and I could even sit him up. I loved my floppy dog.

My pink and green rug was small at first. Mother added a little bit to it whenever she had some fabric that she thought would go with it. Finally it got big enough to be finished. It lay on the floor beside my bed. I still have it and some others of Mother's rugs. When you come to see me, maybe you will figure out which rug has that stripe in it.