Use It Up, Wear It Out

Day 189: I like having new stuff as much as the next person, but having grown up in poverty, I heard the phrase, "Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without" enough times that it became embedded in my psyche. I repurpose whenever possible, in the manner which served my mother well and my grandmother and great-grandmother before her. It was what you did when goods weren't readily available in the pioneer days, during the Great Depression and during two world wars. In fact, many of the skills which today we refer to as "crafts" were born out of necessity, like the making of rag rugs.

Traditionally woven or braided from strips of wool suiting for warmth and durability, rag rugs were also made of lighter weight cottons although the more decorative ginghams, calicos and flour-sack prints usually found their way into quilts instead where the variety of patterns allowed for greater creativity. Floor coverings need to be sturdy and weighty, so heavy cotton cord was used for warp. The strips of weft fabric were beaten firmly into place, packed as tightly as possible for greater durability. Here, I cut my strips from worn-out t-shirts, stitching the ends together until the length filled each shuttle to capacity. When I reached the far end, I simply hand-sewed the near end of the next length to the one on the loom and began weaving again with a new shuttle. Each rug measures 18" x 33", perfect for in front of my kitchen sink. A future project will be made from strips of denim, already cut and waiting to be sewn together, repurposed to good use from jeans which only thought they had seen their better days.