Making a rag rug.

I have made a new rug for the back door. Every so often life gets such that I need a craft that doesn't require much thought.

It got a bit like that in January so out comes a piece of hessian and my favourite hook. We always have old t shirts around the house that no one quite wants or needs so it's easy to source the colour to fill the spaces I draw on the hessian.

I measured out the hessian against the spot by the back door, drew a simple design made up of geometric shapes and pin wheels, loosely based on some lovely thing I had seen at the Kaffe Fasset exhibition in Bath.

 

Slowly it grows, with colours chosen entirely by what is in the rag rug, no planning, very little thought, just trying to put pattern next to plain.

After all, it's just a back door mat, it will be filthy with the mud it's meant to catch.

Of course I could just go done to a shop and buy a new back door mat for very little, it's just a mat for the back door but it feels better to make my own, almost comforting and I will smile at the colours and the shapes whenever it catches my eye.

This tradition comes from needing to make something, to avoid expense. It recalls those hardworking families that had little and had to make the most of it.

I am not driven by cost issues but I am driven to make for its own enjoyment, the desire to make something that has cost me nothing but time.

It's hard to express.

But just at the moment my little rug expresses it perfectly.