Rug braiding has always kind of peaked my interested but even more so when a couple of years ago I discovered a thing as no sew rug braiding. Weaving while braiding… I could not wrap my brain around it but I wanted to know more.
I had attempted to check out some videos on youtube but it resulted in only causing confusion. One video said to avoid knitted fabric while another said only use knitted fabric because woven will just cause your rug to curl. And when to weaving into a braid once and when to weave in twice was all over the place. I got pretty discouraged fast.
Then comes May 2020, and we are in the beginning of a pandemic. Fab Scrap was forced to temporarily close it doors. So to stay in business they offered some great online classes based around use of their scrap fabric. For a small donation you can take a class through Zoom and learn fiber based. As soon as they announced a class to learn no sew rug braiding I thought why not give it a try.
The class was taught by artist Hannah Katz. It was about an hour and a half to two hours long. She went over materials and techniques. She taught that this was one of several traditional ways to make a rug and that use any kind of scraps you have one hand, no matter how small the piece. She showed how to attach pieces of fresh scraps when you current pieces get too short to braid. In the short time I learned a lot and was even able to braid along durning the class. I got a feel for it pretty fast. It was far more intuitive that I originally expected.
After the class I kept on weaving and by the next day or two I had a placemat sized mini rug completed. Shortly after finishing that I went into making a second for The Mr. I realized that I was braiding a bit too tight for my first one so by the second one I was able to figure out how to control my tension a bit better. There is a photo below of the finished mats
The one on the left is my first one. It’s hard to tell but it is a bit on the lumpy side in the center. After using it for a couple of months the weave has relaxed a bit and the lump is less prominent than when I first finished.
I just loved this project and I want to try more using this technique. I believe that a videos of the class is still available on the Fab Scrap website if you wanted to give it a go.
Now, a photo of Miss Zee on our morning walk the other day. She loves her walks and can really walk a couple of miles in the morning but since summer has hit Baltimore we have had some morning where she’ll go for a couple blocks and then just tell “Nope. Time to go home now”. This was one of those mornings.
