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11 I’ve seen braided rugs suffer children and animals and the traffic in front of the kitchen sink for thirty years and still look cheerful and hale. I have seen braided rugs that survived fires when the carpet around them scorched. This immortality makes sense when you consider that a single rug might contain ten wool coats or half a dozen blankets. There really isn’t a way to make fabric or fiber any denser than by braiding it and lacing it together.
One of my mother’s first jobs out of college was actually teaching rug-braiding classes. When she taught me the summer before I went away to college, she stressed that the key to making durable heirloom rugs is tension. This is no ordinary braiding. The finished braid thrums with tension, and the braids are lashed together so tightly that the lacing buries itself deep within the wool, visible on neither side of the rug. The loops of the braids are pulled into each other so forcibly that if color doesn’t distinguish individual rows, you might think it is a single woven mass. A well-made braided rug is stiff and heavy and doesn’t begin to be floppy until it’s at least fifty years old.
Material
Procuring Material
You can conceivably make braided rugs out of most kinds of material, but medium-thick wool works best for a number of reasons. Wool has a natural springiness that helps it hold together, stretches where it needs to, and feels nice underfoot. It’s also a joy to work with, and that’s something to consider, since you’re going to be touching it a lot. You can use thin wool, too, but you’ll have to roll it up extra when you’re working with it in order for the strands to be thick enough. Those extra rolls and folds look less smooth and even and create spots that are more vulnerable to wear. Cotton can work, but it doesn’t have the same forgiving bounce and stretch that wool does.
Wool blends are fine, and you can even use strips of straight-up synthetics in a mostly wool rug if they’re a similar texture; just don’t rely on them heavily or the overall effect of the rug will be synthetic. Above all, avoid mixing different fabric textures in the same rug.
You’re going to need several big bundles of material. It would be quite expensive to buy your material new at $15 per yard or whatever nice thick wool is going for these days. Instead, keep an eye out for large wool garments and blankets at thrift stores and yard sales. Coats are a good source of wool, but they also tend to be heavily reinforced and tailored, making them a pain to tear apart and cut up. Blankets are by far the easiest source of wool, and sometimes you can get huge wool surplus blankets for a decent price. Just be careful that they’re not too thick; you want a material that can fold fairly easily. Avoid small bits of wool with distinctive colors or patterns. You won’t easily be able to match it, and a small skirt, say, might not even have enough material to make a complete ring in your rug. Of course, a righteous blaze of unmatched colors may be your intention.
A lot of useful wool gets donated to thrift stores but never makes it onto the rack. Maybe it has a few holes or worn spots, but the bulk of the material is fine. This is gold, and local thrift stores might even be persuaded to save it for you and give it away or sell it by the pound. Nationally run operations, like Goodwill, have big centralized distribution centers where all their donations go. Sometimes these as-is outlets are open to the public, where you can go and paw through enormous unsorted bins of stuff in search of the cheapest wool. Be careful, though! There are people who make a living competitively scrounging through those bins for antiques, electronics, and fancy clothing to sell on eBay. Don’t try to compete with them, and take courage that they are most definitely not looking for old wool blankets.
Since you’ll be working in a long spiral from the center of the rug out, each successive ring in the rug will be longer and require more material to finish. In other words, you’ll need lots and lots of any color you want on the outside of the rug, but you can get away with just having a piece or two of a certain color you want toward the middle of the rug.
Furthermore, there are gorgeous patterns you can only make on relatively straight stretches of the rug—these patterns are restricted to the broad circles on the outside edges of round rugs or the straight sides of oval rugs. These patterns also require that two of your strands be the same color. In other words, you’d need massive quantities of that color.
You can see that it would be helpful if some of the main colors in your rug are common and easy to find—charcoal, black, red, or beige, for example. That said, the 1980s left behind a glut of brilliant colored garments, which are now finding their way into thrift stores.
In general, solid colors give the rug a bold clarity, whereas plaids and heathers give it more softness.
Preparing the Material
Making your braiding strips is definitely the most boring and least rewarding part of braiding rugs. The more large, flat pieces of fabric you start with, the quicker this stage of the project will go. But sometimes you really want a particular shade of green, and all you can find in that color is an old wool coat with tons of tailoring and buttons and a lining to rip out.
By no means do you have to prepare all your strips before you start working on the rug. It can be a back-and-forth process of tearing up coats to incorporate in your growing rug as you go, and in fact, putting the rug together will give you a clearer notion of what colors you need and how much of them.
Wash your material first (in cold water; no felting, please!) and line dry it. Washing particularly helps with the dust that’s sure to fly when you start ripping up the seams of coats that have hung in an attic for ten years. You might even want to rip out linings and pull open sleeves before washing so the deep dust really gets flushed out. For me, at least, this part of the process is one long sneeze-fest.
To make your strips, lay out your fabric and note the line of the grain. The easiest and most satisfying way to make strips is to cut a little notch in one edge of the fabric and then just rip it along the grain. However, depending on its shape, ripping along the grain line might not be the most efficient use of the fabric, and it’s okay to cut your strips with scissors so long as they’re close to lining up with the grain (avoid cutting strips on the bias).
You want all your strips to be a consistent thickness when rolled up tight, so the width of your strips depends on the thickness of the fabric. Around 2 inches is the minimum width you want to work with, for a decently thick wool. Thinner wools should be cut in strips 3 inches or wider.
Steer around any holes. If they’re small and right near the edge of a strip, they probably don’t matter, but even tiny holes in the middle of the strip can make the rug wear out much more quickly.
Once you’ve amassed a pile of strips of one color, it’s time to attach them to each other. A straight seam would create an awkward bulge in the strip. Instead, stitch a diagonal seam. Overlap the ends of two strips arranged perpendicularly, as shown in the illustration below. By hand or by machine, stitch the diagonal from one corner to the other, securing the stitch at each end. Trim off the corner 1⁄4 inch from the seam. When you unfold the joined pieces, you’ll have one long strip with a diagonal seam that distributes its bulk over several inches.
Remember to keep all your seams on one side of the strip! It’s inevitable that at some point your strip will twist itself without your noticing, and you’ll attach some pieces backward. Just keep an eye out and undo the flipped seam as soon as you notice it.
Unfolded, the strips will be straight, joined by a diagonal seam.
Once your strip is quite long, start coiling it up. Face the seam side inward, and keep the strip flat as you coil it around itself tightly. Once your coil reaches about 8 inches in diameter, it’s time to start a new coil, or it will be too awkward to handle when braiding.
Equipment for Braiding and Lacing
You’ll need a midsize C-clamp to clamp the braid to a table and a sturdy clip to hold the end of your braid whenever you stop braiding. For lacing, you’ll need a bodkin, which is a flat, blunt-ended needle with a curved nose for lacing the braids together (readily available on the Internet or in well-stocked craft stores). Your lace itself is strong waxed linen or hemp twine, 1 to 2 millimeters thick. The wax gives it better grip on the wool.
You’ll also want to make yourself a pair of finger guards for the middle two fingers of your dominant hand. These should be 1⁄2-inch-wide bands of leather or heavy fabric that fit snugly around your middle finger and ring finger. You’ll be pulling so hard on the lacing that without these guards your fingers will get cut.
Braiding Technique
I’m going to first describe the braiding technique that you’ll use for the majority of the rug. The very center of the rug, where you start, uses a specialized braid that’s easier to master if you’ve first figured out the regular braid.
Set yourself up at a comfortable table you can clamp your braid to. Set the coils of strips in your lap, and pull the ends out a few feet long. Next, fold the edges of one strip in to the middle, seam side inward. Fold it again to make a snug little roll. Slide a large safety pin through it and repeat with the two other strips, sliding them on to the same pin with their open sides facing the same direction. Clamp the ends of the strips and the safety pin onto the table.
You know how to braid, right? Put the left strand over the middle strand. Then put the right strand over the new middle strand, and so on. Braiding rugs works the same way, except there are several other things to do simultaneously.
Braid tightly, folding the strands as you go and keeping the open edge to the left.
First, the braid needs to be very tight. You should be pulling away from the clamp, hard, as you work. When you’re working under that much tension, however, any uneven tugging or slackening quickly makes the braid lopsided. You need to keep a firm, steady grip on all three strands as you work. As the rug grows, you won’t need to clamp it anymore. You can sit on the floor, throw one leg over the rug, and work that way.
Second, keep each strip rolled as you braid—edges to the middle, then folded in half. As you unspool your coils of wool strips, keep feeding them into this position.
Third, you need to keep the open edge of each strand facing to the left. It’s very important that you don’t twist or fold the strands as you work—the open edge stays to the left as you weave the strand back and forth in the braid. You also want to try your best to keep the surface of each strand smooth and taut. If the strand starts to fold, pull it flat and tuck the open edge in tighter.
Finally, keep your clip at the ready. You’ll need to untangle your coils quite frequently as you go, so be sure to clip the end of your braid securely to keep all that tension in place. You’ll also have to scoot your chair back as the braid grows longer, and eventually you’ll need to reclamp the braid.
As you can see, this is a lot to do, and there’s nothing wrong with braiding a few feet for practice and then undoing it all. Several times.
Untangling the coils of wool is cumbersome, and I keep trying to invent some sort of lightweight ratcheted spool that would let the coils hang free from the braid without unraveling. But then they would get in the way of the braiding—and if they were long enough to stay out of the way, they’d be long enough to tangle anyway. The trick is to tell stories so entertaining that a helpful friend or child will have the patience to sit around untangling them for you as you go.
Starting a Rug
Once you’re comfortable with the braiding technique, you can embark on a project. You’ll first want to decide on the eventual shape of your rug. I’m going to describe a circular project right now, but you’ll find descriptions of oval and rectangular and bizarre shapes later on.
A small circular chair pad is one of the canonical first projects for rug braiding, simply because it involves all the techniques you’ll need to learn but avoids the miles and miles of braiding in between the start and finish of a big project. That said, a large project is really no more difficult than a small one. Just longer.
To start the braid, you’ll need to form a butt end on each prepared strip. First fold the strip in half inside out. Make an L-shaped stitch as shown below, keeping about 1⁄4 inch away from the raw end of the strip. Clip off the corner and turn the strip right-side out. You’ll have a little finger on the end with no raw edges exposed.
Do this for all three of your strips and slide them on a large safety pin. Stitch the butt ends tightly together, keeping your stitches near the seam lines where they will be hidden when the braids are laced together.
There isn’t enough braid yet to put it in the clamp, so you’ll have to manage as best you can until the braid is a few inches long.
The tightly coiled center of a rug is braided differently from the wider loops farther out. In fact, the innermost coils are so tight that a good stiff straight braid can’t possibly bend so much. The solution is a crooked braid, called an apple peel braid.
Braid once normally—left over center, right over center. Then braid an apple peel: left over center, right over center, right over center. This puts a kink in the braid. Continue alternating normal and apple peel braids until you have a braid several inches long that coils back on itself nicely. Now you can braid normally, throwing in an apple peel here and there to help the braid curl—but remember that it’s the nature of wool to bend and flex, so incorporate the apple peels sparingly. Don’t go more than 6 inches before you start lacing.
The L-shaped seam forms a pocket, which becomes the butt end of the braiding strip when turned inside out.
Slide the three butt ends onto a safety pin, seams facing left.
The white strip and the dotted strip get an extra twist, forming an apple peel braid.
Lacing
Starting the Lace
Load several feet of waxed linen on your bodkin and turn your braid upside down. The braid should now be curling counterclockwise from the center. Slip the bodkin up through the first or second braid loop on the butt end on the inside of the corner. (See the lacing illustration, facing, to see what I mean by up through; it’s almost more sideways than up.) Do not pierce the material itself; hook the bodkin around the braid strand. Pull the twine most of the way through and slip the bodkin up through the braid loop across from it in the curl—this is probably just two or three loops farther down the braid.
Holding on to the loose end of your twine, pull it very, very taut and tie it in a tight knot. Poke the knot with the end of your bodkin until it pops inside a braid loop (make sure it’s not visible from the other side, either). Continue lacing as described in the next section.
General Lacing
Always turn the rug upside down to lace it. The backward braid loops on the underside of the rug make it easier to lace tightly. Put on your finger guards. Insert the bodkin at the side of the braid and follow the braid loop so the bodkin pops out in the center of the braid. Hook your middle two finger around the twine and pull tightly, so tightly that the braid loops fuse into each other and the twine disappears completely. Then insert the bodkin into the braid loop directly across from the one you just looped—you might even be going backward slightly. Pull it tight, and repeat.
Turn the rug upside down and lace back and forth around each braid loop on both braids. The bodkin enters on the underside and pops out in the middle of the braid.
If you’re lacing correctly, you will be lacing through every single braid loop on both braids, but because the outer ring is larger than the previous one, you’ll need to skip one outer braid loop every so often. Be consistent about how often you skip a loop; at first you might be skipping every fourth or fifth loop, but later you will be skipping every twenty or more. If you skip too frequently, the edge of the rug will buckle and scallop. If you don’t skip enough, it will turn into a bowl. Don’t worry; even a wavy, wobbly rug will lie flat after a month or two.
It is incredibly important that the lacing be tight, tight, tight. The laced braid loops will actually intertwine with each other, creating a new braid-like effect between the two braids. If the lacing is not tight enough, the rug will be significantly weaker, as the floppiness will put strain on individual strands of lacing, rather than distributing the strain evenly across all the twine.
When you run out of twine, firmly knot a new piece onto it. When you come to the knot while lacing, give a sharp tug to pop it under a braid loop and hide it from view. Make sure it’s not visible on the other side, either—poke it around with your bodkin to get it just right, and check that when you tug the lace later it doesn’t pop it into view.
Changing Colors
To switch to a new roll of wool or a new color, trim the end of the braid strand at 45-degree angle, and trim the end of the new strip at the corresponding angle. Right side to right side, stitch the ends together to form a diagonal seam much like when you were forming the original strips, but be sure to keep the strips centered if they’re of significantly different widths. Continue braiding, and when you come to the new seam, try to shift the braid around so the seam is on a hidden part of the strand.
Finishing a Rug
Since a braided rug is a continuous spiral, laced back to itself, you might wonder how you can possibly end it. There are several options. The first is the rattail: You trim the last 8 inches or so of each strip to form a gradual taper down to a point. Braid as far as you can, maintaining the folds and all, until you can’t braid any longer without the raw strip edges popping out. Clip the end of the braid and lace up to the end. Then use pliers or a crochet hook to grab one of the strands and weave it into a braid loop of matching color on the previous ring. Give the other strands a twist, and tuck them into their corresponding colors. Trim any ends that hang out, and with matching thread, make a few stitches to be sure each strand is securely tucked.
The second finishing method is to form a rattail, but follow it with a butted row, which gives a nice finished border to the rug and looks like a circular continuous braid. Magical! And rather tricky.
Start braiding the final ring just the way you started the rug, but don’t stitch the three strands together. Keep them securely fastened with a clip or safety pin. When you go to lace the ring to the rug, leave the first 6 inches or so unlaced. Continue around as usual until you reach the starting point, leaving the last few inches unlaced as well.
Now you need to make the start and the end into a continuous braid. Braid the end until the strands are in the same arrangement as they are at the start. Mark the point where each ending strand would meet its corresponding beginning strand. Undo the braid a little way and trim the wool strips 1⁄2 inch beyond this point. Fold under the 1⁄2-inch end and fold in the sides of the strip; stitch in place. Rebraid the end and clamp.
You should have two butt-end braids that match up. Now, this whole butted-braid process involves lots of patience and the ability to will fabric into its proper place. Your job is to stitch each strip to its matching strand on the other side, maintaining the braided pattern while you do. There should be no slack excess material, no bumps and puffs. But there probably will be the first time you try it, or maybe you’ll realize it’s not a braid by the time you’re done. It’s one of those precarious things where nothing holds together in its proper place until everything is done. Don’t be afraid to redo it until it looks right.
Line up the matching pairs of butt ends and wrangle them into place.
Once the butted braid is stitched together, you can lace the rest of it to the rug. Secure and disguise your lacing twine by knotting it back on itself, lacing it through several more loops, and trimming it flush.
Shapes
An oval braided rug is more accurately a rectangle with two half circles on each end. You start the rug by braiding a long straight strip the length of the finished rectangle. When it’s time to turn the corner back, use a few apple peel braids. You’ll really only need the apple peel on the first two corners.
You can make a rectangular rug by braiding separate strips side by side or by forming four sharp apple peel corners every time you go around. Beyond that, you can come up with all sorts of shapes once you’re comfortable with the mechanics.
Patterns
When you’re lacing long straight sections of a rug, you don’t have to skip any loops. This lets you create patterns formed by lacing together matching colors. You can even form these patterns on circular rugs provided you’re working 20 inches or so out from the center, where consecutive rows have a fairly small difference in length. Here, again, we are relying on the wonderful elasticity of wool to even things out for us when we force the strands to go where we want.
With three different colors, you can create an interesting pattern by lacing matching colors together. With just two colors—two strands of black and one of red, for example—you can either create a web-like pattern by never letting red touch red, or a black diamond pattern by matching the reds together.
These patterns can be repeated indefinitely on straight stretches, and for several rows on round areas. The shallower the curve (the farther out you are on a circular rug) the more patterned rows you can put together. At some point, however, you’ll have to go back to skipping loops when you lace, or the rug will become bowl shaped. Start a new pattern or do something random for a while. When you’re starting a large patterned section on a curved part of the rug, it helps to skip a few extra loops on the first row. That way you’ve built in some excess.
Caring for the Finished Rug
Like I said, braided rugs are eminently sturdy. Clean them with a wet sponge or a bristly brush. If the rug has any warp to it, keep it in a clean but well-trafficked spot. It will become perfectly flat within a short amount of time.
