Braided Jeans Rug: Braiding Long Strands

Video Transcript

"Ok. now let's start our braiding. You want to take your 3 strips and just sort of pile them up on top of each other, and a nice threaded needle and push that thru. We're just going to secure these pieces together; I'm just going to go threw a few times and knot that off. And then we're going to tie it to a chair or something secure that will hold the end while we do our braiding. So I got a piece of hemp twine here and I'm just going to slip it in to that knot and I'm going to tie it to a chair. Ok. now we want to begin our braiding and it's just a simple braid taking from the outside to the middle and from the outside to the middle. Now you can change the color by folding the denim in different ways; so this one is folded so the inside is showing and this one is folded so the outside is showing, and then you can; and the colors will change if you do it like that. You want to braid with a flat braid so I'm, I'm almost like flattening the piece out when I fold it over and then as you work down you have to continuously pull the ends apart because they'll get all tangled up. So you want to continue braiding and if you decide you want to change color you can always turn the, the piece inside out again and; and get a different, a little bit different look. You're braiding fun; you there is an upside and an underneath side to the braid so you want to, any; you want to decide which is going to be the top of the braid and so you will put any like extra tags or anything like hanging out when we do a join, you want to try to keep that on one side; on the bottom side and try to keep the top side of the braid looking the neatest. Now it's not such a neat thing anyway; we're using rags and but you want a little, a certain texture on the top. So you keep continuing down until we get, until one; one braided piece gets too short and I'll do it go one more, about 3 or 4 inches like this. Ok, so now this piece is about 3 or 4 inches and we're going to join another piece; we're not going to sew it on we're just going to put the two together, I'm going to put it underneath like this and then fold the piece; and then continue braiding with the doubled up piece and that will secure the new piece in there and continue lengthening it. So whenever you come to the end or not quite to the end; you're going to add another piece in the same way and continue braiding. You need quite a long length in order to make a rug. Now I'll show you what to do when you come to one of these corners; remember we made these corners as we we're cutting in order to have a very long extended piece of cloth, so when you come to this you can just sort of roll it up and then continue braiding. And if there are any flaps or anything sticking out; you want to try to keep that towards the underneath. And remember to constantly run your hand along the strips to kind of keep the ends from being tangled as you braid."