Twining Rug Making
Twining is an old weaving technique that has been adapted over the last century to make rag rugs.
Twining rug making. Twining a rag rug last summer some friends with a wood shop allowed me to use their expertise to make a simple wood frame using some maple 2x2 s i got at home depo. They were originally made from leftover fabrics that could not be used for anything else. Like our traditional british techniques twined rugs are made using scraps and oddments but that s where the similarities end. Strips of fabric are interwoven on a simple loom to make attractive and very durable rugs.
Old clothing that was worn out. Well rug twining is a popular form of rag rug making in america. Twining is probably the most homemade kind of weaving. In this video i show you how to add a strip of material and how to finish a row and start a new one.
Twining is not weaving it is a technique of fabric construction that can t be duplicated by machine and is possibly one of the oldests forms of constructed fabric. One benefit to using the twining weave side by side to make a braid would be that your warp threads would be locked in whereas when you soumak there is the potential for your warp threads to separate off the loom depending on how many warps you go over and what. I review in more detail the twining process. They made a jig for me and predrilled the holes for the upper and lower screws and i took the whole thing home and put it together last summer.
Twined rag rugs have been made for over a hundred years. Use twined rugs as bath mats area rugs below the kitchen sink or simply decorative throw rugs on otherwise bare floors. When you make a double side by side twining it looks a lot like a soumak braid. Originally done with yarns and other fibers the method was revived in the thirties and forties as a way to make rugs from recycled material.
Twined rugs are made using a basic loom and don t use any hessian whatsoever. They were always colorful.