Rug Braiding Schoolhouse 01/31/26 Janice Black

Would you like to try your hand at making a small braided rug entirely from braiding, with no sewing at all involved? If so, this class is for you! Janice Black, our Schoolhouse chair, would love to share this technique with you!

Supplies and Fabric Choices:

You can make your rug as scrappy or as color-coordinated as you like, but I have found that choosing a single fabric and including it throughout most of the rug (like the solid dark red in one of the rugs shown, and the dusty solid plum color in the other rug) can help tie everything else together. You will find that colors play together very differently in a braided rug than they do in a quilt, so once you have found your main “foundation” fabric to use throughout the rug, you may find it the most pleasing to pull colors from just one other color family to use with it. Your fabrics do not need to be carefully chosen to exactly match . . . they will end up blending in a way that is similar to mixing paint. So, for example, two different shades of pink that would look terrible if used together in a quilt would probably look just fine when braided together.

I’m really not sure how to estimate how much fabric you will need, but you’ll probably need more than you would think! It partly depends on the size of rug you’d like to complete, and on how wide you choose to cut your strips (which is what determines the thickness of the rug). To keep your cost down, I would recommend purchasing an old sheet or two from a thrift store that could be used to create the major part of the rug. There is no need to use high-quality quilting cottons for this. The red rug is one that I made for my daughter from vintage double-knit fabrics, and it turned out really well!

To help with guesstimating the amount of fabric needed . . . I used about seven yards of the solid plum fabric, so probably a total of more than fourteen yards of fabric in all. For a small rug just big enough to allow you to learn the technique, I’m guessing you would need at least 3-5 yards of fabric.

You will also need a pair of scissors or small but heavy-duty snips for cutting slits to join the strips together. The strips can also be cut with scissors, or you may want to bring a rotary cutter for that. I do not recommend cutting all of your strips in advance, because stopping periodically to cut strips can give your wrists a break from the repetitive motion of braiding the rug.

Additional Recommendations: Please note that knowing how to braid before coming to class would be very helpful. The class will probably also be easier for you if you are familiar with the concept of increasing on curves from having done some crochet or knitting (although I can certainly try to guide you through this if you are not familiar with it). Finally, I would not recommend the class for someone who currently experiences a lot of pain in their wrists or hands.