Free Braided Rag Rug Instructions

Rugs are designed to provide insulation, protect your floors in high traffic areas of your house and prevent falls due to slipping on surfaces such as wood and linoleum. One style of rug that you can make yourself is a braided rag rug. You can make it in any color to suit any room in your house.

To complete this craft project, you will need a great deal of scrap fabric that you can cut into strips. You can use either a sewing machine or just needle and thread to sew the scraps together. You will need scissors to cut your fabric.

Cut your scraps of fabric into strips that are about 1.5 inches wide. The longer the strips are, the less sewing required. For fabric, you can use old clothes or just pieces of fabric from a fabric store.

Once all of your strips are cut, you are going to create three long strips by sewing the smaller strips together end-to-end either by hand or with a sewing machine. The three long strips should be about the same length. It's a good idea to rotate working on the strips rather than sewing one long strip at a time and finding out at the end that one strip is much longer than the others.

Tie a knot at one end of the three long strips and then braid them together like you would braid hair. Because your strips are so long, they may frequently become tangled as you work. A clothes pin can be used to hold your braid while you untangle your strips. Keep braiding until you reach the end of one or all of your strips, depending on how even your strips are.

Now coil your long braid up tightly to see how big your rug would be. You can sew more fabric strips onto your three long strips if your braid is not long enough for the size rug that you want. It is easiest to do this coiling on a wood or linoleum floor so that you can spin your rug around, which will speed up the coiling process.

Once your braid coil is big enough, stitch your rug together with needle and thread. Try to keep the stitches hidden by placing them between the coils rather than on the top of your rug. Start at the inside of your coil and work your way out. When you are finished sewing your rug together you are done and your rug is ready for use.