The Braided Rug Go-Round
(Page 6 of 6)
November/December 1971
By Nancy Bubel
Finish a runner on both ends with a piece of heavy fabric 8 or 10 inches wide and an inch or so longer than the width of the rug. Turn the ends of the fabric under, fold it in its center, wrap it around the end of the runner and sew it front and back to form a binding.
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We won't fool each other by pretending that braided rugs can be made quickly. They can't. But nothing in the procedure requires your total concentration, either. You can open seams and rip strips while soaking up the sun, catching the breeze or sitting in front of a winter fire. Sewing, braiding and lacing can all be done leisurely as you talk to friends, listen to music or—from the corner of your eye—watch the chickens foraging in the yard.
Because a rug in progress can be left right on the floor where it's easy to work on in spare minutes, it'll grow surprisingly fast . . . and family and friends can add their bit. Outof-pocket investment (mostly you're investing time and imagination) for such a useful product is small, too. For all these reasons, rug braiding is a near perfect cottage industry.
Selling braided rugs won't pull in your whole keep, of course, but it's an easy homestead way to make a little bread and yogurt money while keeping the sheep's coat going round once more. And for us, at least, it allows so much quantity buying at rummage sales that many of our clothes cost only pennies.
We sell our rugs through the Chestnut Hill Community Center in Philadelphia for $2.00 a square foot (thus, an 8' X 10' rug carries a tag of $160) and the Center retains a 25% commission. The price is fairly low but it's more important to us to have something interesting and productive to do in odd moments than it is to sell rugs at the highest possible price.
The Center turns our work over steadily all year long and we sell other rugs at auctions and through ads in the paper. We've even gotten several special orders now and we have fun coming up with color combinations that suit a certain customer's mood or room.
Our braided rug work and marketing may not be the most lucrative operation in the world . . . but it's personal . . . can't be hurried . . . and we're happy doing it our way.
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