File this under “things I never noticed in forty-plus years of reading LH books.”
Crocheted Rag Rug. Maybe Almanzo never remembered it in forty years of being married, but Laura either did or made it up. In These Happy Golden Years, she wrote that at Reverend Brown’s house, there was a marble-topped table sitting on a crocheted rag rug. This is the only crocheted rag rug in the whole series. All the others are braided.
I’ve crocheted a rag rug, and I didn’t even know it was a “Little House” craft… until now. I’ve braided a rag rug, too. I prefer crocheting, but it takes a lot of material to make a rug. Here’s how.
Rip or cut a yard of fabric (from a bolt 36 inches wide or so) into one-and-a-half inch strips. Sew the strips end to end to make one long strip. There’s also a way you can cut slits in the ends of the fabric and hook them together without sewing (they demonstrate that technique at the Ingalls Homestead in De Smet), but I don’t like it as well as sewing.
I use a large wooden crochet hook (larger than size K) and work in single crochet. I like to fold the raw edges to the center of the strip as I’m working; it makes a neater finished product.
The rug I made is rectangular, probably 44 inches wide and not finished yet (at over 4 feet long). I seem to be getting a couple of inches of length out of a yard of fabric. Since I’m purchasing fabric as I go — not using “rags” — the finished product will cost as much as my Oriental rug of the same size.
