Want to Recycle Your Old Jeans? Make a Rug

If you are like thousands of people who like to recycle, then you probably have a large box or bag filled with old jeans. They are the kind that is still in good shape but Junior just outgrew them and you haven't the heart to throw them away! In the back of your mind a thought prevails that there mustbe some use for them. Well have no fear; braiding rugs are here!

The craft of rug braiding, like so many other good things, is entrenched American's necessity and lack of materials, therefore the first recyclers were born!. Early colonists found that they could use what they had which was 'rags' of worn clothing to create rugs that they needed for warmth on those oh-so-drafty floors. In some cases the rugs were made to cover the dirt floors in a few of the earlier homes.

Braid rugs have gone in and out of style (except in certain regions) and really fit in with the recycle movement in this and other countries. After all, who doesn't need a rug?

Before you start to think those defeatist thoughts, let me give you a few key elements of rug braiding.

Anyone can do this. The only skills that you need are the ability to braid, lace, cutting and a little bit of sewing. My own brother has done this so I know that you can!

Recycling used goods into a useful form saves you on your pocketbook and a something else that isn't thrown into a landfill!

These rugs fit well into any and every room. Once you get the hang of it, you can even make the narrow rugs for stairs and runners for hallways.

These are easily cleaned and are reversible. And they are simple to mend or even to enlarge.

I will not deny that it does take time making one but they are simple to construct. You can do it at your own leisure such as when you're watching television.

There is no expensive equipment or frame to work from. Rug braiding makes good pick up work.

Your rug will be an original. No rug ever looks the same, which is their charm.

If you are so inclined, these rugs make a good side business. They are in demand in craft stores and small shops. They are now seen in catalogs at three times the price that you could sell them for. I have sold my rugs out of my home and, although I never make a fortune, they do afford me a little bit more spending money around the holidays.

You can make these rugs out of other materials besides jeans. Woolen fabric or a blend of wool and acrylic or other man-made fiber is the best choice. Synthetics lack that springy, alive quality and cotton, while attractive, is still to work with and quick to wear out. You might think that old jeans fit into the cotton category but jeans are sturdier than a plain old cotton shirt or dress.

Fabrics To Avoid

As I stated previously, there are some fabrics to avoid in braiding rugs. There are also other items to avoid.

Open, coarsely woven fabric that is likely to unravel or show wear in certain areas of the thread.

Threadbare fabrics, but only if elbows or knees are worn and the rest of the fabric is otherwise in good shape. These worn out areas can be cut out.

Clothes with lots of seams such as jackets with many darts.

Hard-finish wool fabric from men's suits.

Best Fabrics To Use

Old wool bathrobes are especially good because they made good long strips.

Old coats

Torn slacks

Moth eaten blankets

Skirts

Wool dresses

NOTE: If you ask around especially during the fall and spring-cleaning times, your friends, family and neighbors may have useful discards to use with your new project.

It is also a good practice to wash your clothing prior to beginning to braid. Using hot water may cause it to shrink but it also helps in tightening the weave of the material.

Dyeing

If you find some white wool fabric and you cannot find a certain color [for your rug], then you might want to dye the fabric to make the color that you are looking for. You can use either commercial dye or natural coloring such as black walnut shells or onionskins. If you have to use new wool, don't worry about mixing old and new wool strips. As long as the fabrics are the same weight and nap are the same as the old fabrics, your rug should look fine.

Supplies

In addition to your fabric you will need the following:

Sharp sewing scissors

Thread: 1) heavy duty for piecing strips 2) Button and carpet thread for lacing braids together.

NOTE: Do not use nylon thread to lace together wool braids. The nylon has a tendency to cut through the wool as the rugs wears.

Bodkin, which is a flat, blunt "poker", used to lace the braids together.

Knife or seam ripper

Tape measure

How To Begin

First, prepare your strips for braiding by cutting up the fabrics. If you have the time and patience, you can use the collars and other short sections. Intersperse the short strips with longer ones in sewing them together, though, to avoid undue extra bulk in the braid from too many piecing seams placed close together.

You can recycle the parts that are too small for anything by soaking them in water and burying them in the compost pile since jeans are a natural material, they will deteriorate quickly amongst the cabbage leaves and egg shells. Watch out when ripping up your demins for zippers, coat linings and buttons can be re-used. My most unusual buttons came from old clothes that were purchased from second hand shops for my rug creations.

Cut or tear the denim into strips. Some heavier material doesn't tear easily and you'll have to cut it. To tear the lighter fabrics, cut three-inch notches all along the short edge and then tear off the strips one by one.

Variety of Width

The strips' width will vary with the weight of the material. Cut the heavier pieces into strips two inches wide. Don't cut it less or the edges will not stay rolled in. Use a three-inch width for lighter weight fabrics that require more self-padding as they're folded together. Don't cut strips any wider than three inches.

These strips must be sewn together to make a continuous length that will form 1/3 of the braid. You can sew together all of the strips on one kind of fabric or color before starting the rug if you wish but you'll be doing a whole lot of untangling as you braid. It's easier to sew together only a few strips at a time. Keep the strips together by rolling them into a wheel, fastening the last loose strip with a pin. Then, when you come to a break in the continuity of the strip as you use up the wheel of wool, you can join the cut ends with hand stitches. When I say 'wheels' I mean rolling the material into a type of circle that resembles a wheel when you look at it sideways.

Sorting Colors

As you roll up wheels of prepared strips, it's a good idea to sort the colors, at least into rough categories. Quite likely you'll find that you have a quantity of certain colors. If you go further into braiding and use different materials, you will have sort plaid as one or in the colors that is dominate.

Sew On Bias

Strips are always sewn together on the bias. That is, it is always sewn at an angle. If you were to sew them straight across the ends, you would have a bulky; hard-to-manage lump to braid around the diagonal seam distributes the bulk and keeps the braid pliable.

It's not difficult to find the true bias of the denim. It runs diagonally at a 45-degree angle across the straight of the goods. To make a true bias cut, overlap the two strips to be joined, right sides up, for as many inches as they are wide (2-inch overlap for two-inches wide strips, for example) and cut diagonally across the double layer of fabric from one corner to the other. Then with the right sides facing, line up the newly cut edges at right angles and sew them firmly together, using either a tight machine stitch or a backhand stitch by hand. Use double thread, preferably heavy-duty, for hand stitching. It isn't necessary to match the thread color to the wool exactly, but keep common sense in mind and don't use black thread with a light color.

When using jeans, planning a color scheme to your rug is pretty simple. You can use light and dark denim alternatively or combine different colored jeans. Such as:

Dark blue, black, light blue

Red, white, black and white

Maroon, pink and white (most girls like this combo)

Green, dark blue, and grey

But it all gets down to personal taste. But for your first project keep it simple.

Braid Aid

For beginners, attempting to create a plump and firm braid, often have difficulty in keeping the three strips properly folded. A Braid-Aid may be just the ticket until you have more confidence. It operates like extra fingers and can be bought at craft and fabric stores.

Flat Edges

You will start braiding just as you would your own hair, except that you have to take the extra care to fold the strips around to make flat rather than twisted edges. If you are new to braiding, it is a good idea to use three different colors.

Tension

For the first few feet of your rug, the braid will seem to be everywhere and nowhere. You need to put some tension on it or order to get an even braid. Pin, tie or clamp it so that you can pull on it gently as you work. Braid about tow or three years before beginning to lace the rug together. For a hit-or-miss rug in which color planning is not critical, you could let your braid accumulate a bit longer, but not too long, or it will get tangled and unruly when you try to form the rug.

Length

To determine the proper length for your starting braid comes down to elementary math. The estimated length of the rug minus its project width equals the length of the starting braid. For a 7' X 9' rug, you would plan on an initial center braid two feet in length. Allow a few extra inches, about three inches for every two feet. Therefore, a 7'X9' rug, you would measure out an actual 2' 3" for your center braid.

Doubling Back

Mark the end of the starting length of braid with a safety pin and double the braid back on itself so that you have two rows of braids side by side. Force both sections of the braid to lie flat as you form this rounded corner. When lacing a rug together, always lay your work a hard and flat surface such as a table or the floor.

Now thread your bodkin (blunt needle) with a double strand of heavy button-and-carpet thread about twelve inches long. Using longer thread won't save any more time and you risk entanglements or breakage. Knot the end of the thread and start at the pin-marked corner. Push the bodkin between the braid folds. Take several stitches to secure the thread. Then begin to lace by inserting the bodkin through every other braid fold, alternating from left to right. Pull firmly with your right hand as you hold the braids flat with your left. Remember never to let your bodkin pierce the fabric. It leads the threads between the folds of fabric. This is what makes the rug reversible.

After you have laced your first length of braid down to the turning point, you will begin to see where craftsmanship comes into play. If you sew too tightly around the corners, your rug won't lie flat. If you sew it too loosely, the rounds will gap unattractively. Rounding the corners on a braided rug requires judgment and common sense. There are no strict rules, just guidelines. Loops on the sewn-on braid should match loops on the rug. As you hold that first braid around the corners, you can see what needs to happen next.

How To Keep It Flat

The first six to ten rounds are the most important in your rug, at the corners only. The stitches on the rug's body must be closer together than those on the braid that you are attaching. So after lacing through a loop on the outer braid, and then through the next loop on the body of the rug, you skip a loop on the outer braid and lace the following loop to the very next loop on the rug's body. NOTE: Skip a loop on the new braid but don't skip on the rug body.

In this way, you "hold back" the attaching braid so that it stays flat. Too many of these double stitches, though, will cause the rug to create a wave rather than buckle. Later, as it grows and the turns are less sharp, you won't need to hold back the outside braid as often in order to match the loops, as you had to during the first few rounds. This process will soon become second nature.

For a round rug, there's no need to compute the length of a starting braid. Just snail the braid around and around as you hold if flat and repeatedly correct for the increasing by making the 'skipped" stitches every few inches in the beginning and only each foot or so as the rug enlarges.

Starting Over

If it looks as though your rug is buckling or rippling, you will lose nothing but time by unlacing the piece and beginning again from shortly before the point where it begins to look misshapen. Even the thread can be used again. Ripping out complete work may be emotionally painful but it'll be worth it.

Dimples or folds in the braids are the result of using uneven tension in braiding or combining fabrics of various weight, or of folding the strips unevenly. Whenever you join on a new lacing thread, tie it to the old one with a firm knot, leaving ¾" ends which can be tucked back between the loops.

To Complete The Rug

It's time to complete your rug! You complete it by tapering the last 6-8" of the braid. Trim each strip so that it tapers to about half its original width at the cut end. Braid these narrow ends, carefully rolling in the edges, and lace the tapered butts firmly to the rug, retracing the last few lacing stitches for extra firmness. Leave a 2-3" length of the lacing thread and weave it back between the braids, using a crocket hook, to form a secure and invisible ending.

Square Rugs

Rugs can also be braided in squares and in long straight mats for stair or hallway carpeting. To make square or rectangular rugs, compute the length of the center strip as you would for an oval rug. In place of the gradual increases made at the shoulder of the rounded rugs, the squared-off rugs are laced straight down each side, with an extra fold made in the braid at the point where it turns the corner, forming an L-joint that gives the rug its squared-off shape. Skip the loop at the point of the corner when lacing the rug together.

This style is the best for runner or stair carpet rugs and may be made by lacing together parallel braids. When you plan the length of this type of rug, allow at least one inch per foot of shrinkage in the laced rug. Be sure to figure in any additional length needed to go around the lip of each stair tread.

Patience, Patience

Don't elude yourself that braided rugs can be made quickly because they cannot. But nothing in creating rugs requires your total concentration either. You can open and re-do strips while doing homework or watching television! And don't think all of these instructions are something to panic over. Braiding rubs is a very relaxing craft, which is a good reason to pursue it.

A rug in progress can be left on a table or floor where it is easy to return to and work on. Other family members may want to stop and add on to your braid much like when someone leaves an unfinished puzzle on the kitchen table. Someone is bound to stop and add a little! Thus, you may find that you enjoy the process of making the rug as much as the complete project.
SOURCES: 'Braiding Rugs" by Nancy Bubel
'The Illustrated Guide to Rug Braiding" by Verna Cox