Sunday, May 31, 2020

An easy miniature rag rug

I had this idea for a while, for an easy to make rag rug.
I made one for Miss Frobisher's Cottage, back when I was new to making miniatures. I placed strips of embroidery floss side by side and stitched them together with my sewing machine. While I was doing it I kept thinking there had to be an easier way, maybe with spray adhesive?
Eventually I bought some spray adhesive and tried it.
It doesn't look bad at all. I should have spent more time on it, some of the threads got crossed, leaving a few little gaps, but I realized that it was almost 3:30 and I had to get dinner started before family started asking me "is there anything to eat around here?"

I used some embroidery floss my daughter left behind when she moved out years ago, and some cheesecloth. Old gauze bandage would do fine too. I've got some that's been sitting in my dresser drawer for 15 years from when I burned my hand. I should move it to my studio where I could get some use out of it.

I started by cutting out a piece of gauze and laying it on my table, then I cut lengths of embroidery floss a bit longer than the size of the rug I wanted.
I sprayed the cheesecloth with adhesive, and started laying down strips of the floss. It does get to be a bit of a sticky job. I found the best way to do it was to lay down the thread, then hold it down on the gauze at one end while I slid my finger along the thread to lay it flat on the gauze. Then I'd reverse and smooth the other way. I could lay down several threads, then I found that I needed to give the gauze another spritz of glue to continue.
I also learned that it doesn't matter if the glue sprays onto the threads.
Here's a picture of the rug and how it looks from underneath.
I made the rug bigger than I needed it to be, so I could cut off the raggeddy ends.
The spray adhesive stiffens up the rug a bit, and it lays flat.

If you're a bit more careful than I was, taking a little more time, you should have a very nice little rug without too much effort.

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