Bad Day for Painting

It turns out that today is not a great day for choosing trim colors. It is dark and cloudy outside. I would rather have a sunny day for this particular job. I am not stopping on the Rusty Needle. Honest. I am just taking the day off.


It is a good day for working on needlework. I can do that under a magnifying light. So we will be taking a tour of rug making today.



These are some of the rugs that I have made with different techniques. I thought that some of you, if you haven't already, might like to try your hand at a few.


The first one, starting on the left is the easiest one to do. You are seeing the back side and the front side. This one was printed from a website that sells real rugs. It is printed on muslin.


Cut a piece of muslin to 8 1/2" X 11". I pull threads in the muslin to make sure I am getting a straight cut. Then trim to 81/2" X 11". Then iron the muslin to the shiny side of the freezer paper. Trim the paper to the edge of the muslin. Make sure there are no frayed edges on the fabric. I press it a second time to make sure all of the edges are stuck together. The freezer paper allows the cloth to be stiff enough to pass through the printer.


I usually set up a page on my Printshop program with several rugs on the page to save time and materials. You can use whatever program you have to do this. Be sure to leave at least a half inch between the rugs so that you will have fabric to turn under for the hems.

When you have printed the rugs, spray the printed side with a good sealer. I swear by Patricia Nimock's Matte Spray Sealer. You can get it at Wal Mart or any good craft store. That keeps the rug from running.


Now peel off the freezer paper being careful not to stretch the fabric. Cut the rugs with a 1/4" hem allowance of plain muslin all around. Turn this under with white glue. Take a 1/2" strip of muslin cut in the straight of grain and glue it on the backside of either end of the rug with about 1/8" hanging over the edge. be careful not to have any of the glue under the edge that is sticking out. Trim to fit. Fray the edge. Now you should have a rug that looks something like the second one in the photo.


The beige rug that you see next is simply a piece of even weave linen with two strands of embroidery floss run across either end in a darning pattern of straight running stitches.


The zebra rug is bunka. Bunka is a Japanese thread that comes in a kind of a chain stitch that you unravel to work with. I made a pattern and traced it on sewer's medium weight pellon. I cut it out with a border all around. Next tape it to a work board with masking tape. That way it won't wiggle while you work on it. Then starting at the outer edge of each separate color you glue lines of the bunka to the pellon as close as possible. It helps to have a needle nosed glue bottle or a syringe to make fine lines of glue for this. After you complete filling in all of the spaces like a coloring book you will have something that looks a lot like a miniature hooked rug. Then you can unfasten it from the board and trim it close to the edge. You can either leave enough to turn under or very carefully just trim it close. I usually do the latter.


Next you see a little braided rug peaking out. That one was done with 6 strand embroidery floss in 3 colors. I simply tied a knot in one end of the 3 strands and started braiding. This takes more floss that you would think so I hope you like to braid. I then started gluing this from the center out to the same pellon that I used for the previous rug. When I got out a ways I changed to all one color for a couple of rows. These do not have to be connected while braiding. The color change is in the gluing. Put some glue on the braid where you want to cut it. Cut it on a slant towards the center of the rug and start the next piece the same way so that they kind of blend into one another. Continue doing this, changing colors when you want to until the rug is big enough or you are sick of braiding. Trim this one the same as the bunka one. I don't recommend turning this one under. Too many curves.


The last two are needlepoint and cross stitch. I won't go into that. There are a lot of books on the market that tell you how to do those in miniature. The blue one was one of the first ones I did. It was from a Dover book. The last one is one of my own designs.

This is one that I finished not too long ago from one of the English books I have on mini rugs.

Sorry about the sidetrack. Maybe just one person will try one of these techniques to make a rug for their dollhouse. If somebody does, I would love to see the results.

See you tomorrow.