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HOW TO MAKE RUGS

    [Illustration: LOOM WARPED FOR WEAVING]

How to Make Rugs

_By_

CANDACE WHEELER

Author of "Principles of Home Decoration," etc.


ILLUSTRATED


    [Illustration]


NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1908


Copyright, 1900
By CANDACE WHEELER

Copyright, 1902
By DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & CO.

Published October, 1902




CONTENTS


FOREWORD: HOME INDUSTRIES AND DOMESTIC MANUFACTURES.

CHAPTER

   I.   RUG WEAVING.                       19

  II.   THE PATTERN.                       33

 III.   DYEING.                            45

  IV.   INGRAIN CARPET RUGS.               57

   V.   WOVEN RAG PORTIERES.               67

  VI.   WOOLEN RUGS.                       79

 VII.   COTTON RUGS.                       99

VIII.   LINSEY WOOLSEY.                   113

NEIGHBOURHOOD INDUSTRIES: AFTER WORD.     125




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


Loom Warped for Weaving             _Frontispiece_

                                       FACING PAGE

Weaving                                         20

The Onteora Rug                                 36

The Lois Rug                                    52

Sewed Fringe for Woven Portiere                 72

Knotted Warp Fringe for Woven Table-cover       72

Isle La Motte Rug                               90

Greek Border in Red and Black                  108

Braided and Knotted Fringe                     108

Diamond Border in Red and Black                108

The Lucy Rug                                   128




FOREWORD.

HOME INDUSTRIES AND DOMESTIC MANUFACTURES.


The subject of Home Industries is beginning to attract the attention
of those who are interested in political economy and the general
welfare of the country, and thoughtful people are asking themselves
why, in all the length and breadth of America, there are no
well-established and prosperous domestic manufactures.

We have no articles of use or luxury made in _homes_ which are objects
of commercial interchange or sources of family profit. To this general
statement there are but few exceptions, and curiously enough these
are, for the most part, in the work of our native Indians.

A stranger in America, wishing--after the manner of travelers--to
carry back something characteristic of the country, generally buys
what we call "Indian curiosities"--moccasins, baskets, feather-work,
and the one admirable and well-established product of Indian
manufacture, the Navajo blanket. But these hardly represent the mass
of our people.

We may add to the list of Indian industries, lace making, which is
being successfully taught at some of the reservations, but as it is
not as yet even a self-supporting industry, the above-named
"curiosities" and the Navajo blanket stand alone as characteristic
hand-work produced by native races; while from our own, or that of the
co-existent Afro-American, we have nothing to show in the way of true
domestic manufactures.

When we contrast this want of production with the immense home product
of Europe, Asia, parts of Africa, and South America--and even certain
islands of the Southern Seas--we cannot help feeling a sort of dismay
at the contrast; and it is only by a careful study of the conditions
which have made the difference that we become reassured. It is, in
fact, our very prosperity, the exceptionally favourable circumstances
which are a part of farming life in this country, which has hitherto
diverted efforts into other channels.

These conditions did not exist during the early days of America, and
we know that while there was little commercial exchange of home
commodities, many of the arts which are used to such profitable
purpose abroad existed in this country and served greatly to modify
home expenses and increase home comforts. To account for the cessation
of these household industries, it is only necessary to notice the
drift of certain periods in the short history of America's settlement
and development.

We shall see that the decline of domestic manufactures in New England
and the Middle States was coincident with two rapidly increasing
movements, one of which was the opening and settlement of the great
West, and the other the establishment of cotton and woolen mills
throughout the country.

In short, the abundant acreage of Western lands, fertile beyond the
dreams of New England or Old World tillers, threw the entire business
of production or family support upon the man. The profit of his easily
acquired farm land was so great and certain that it became almost a
reproach to him to have his womenkind busy themselves with other than
necessary household duties.

The cotton and woolen mills stood ready to supply the needed material
for clothing, and it was positive economy to push the spinning-wheel
out of sight under the garret eaves and chop up the bulky loom for
firewood. The wife and daughters might reputably cook and clean for
the men whose business it was to cover the black acres with golden
wheat, but spinning and weaving were decidedly unfashionable
occupations. Even the emigrants from countries where the spinning and
weaving habit was an inheritance as well as a necessity, were governed
by the custom of the country, and devoted the entire energy of the
family to the raising of crops.

It is, in fact, owing to fortunate circumstances that, if we except
the mountain regions of the South, there are no longer farmhouse or
domestic manufactures in America.

This, as I have said, only goes to prove the hitherto unexampled
prosperity of the country. In fact, the absence of these very
industries means that there are greater sources of profit within the
reach of farming households.

This being so, it is natural to ask, why the re-establishment of
farmhouse manufactures, or the encouragement and development of them,
is a desirable movement.

There are exceedingly good individual and personal reasons; and there
are also commercial and national ones, which should not be ignored.

All farmers are not successful. There are many poor as well as rich
ones; and the wife of a poor farmer has less pecuniary independence,
less money to spend, and fewer ways of gaining it, than any other
woman of equal education and character in America.

A poor farmer is often obliged to pay out for labour, fencing, stock,
insurance and taxes every dollar gained by the sale of his crops, and
if by good luck or good management there should be a small excess, he
is apt to hoard it against unlooked-for emergencies. This, at first
enforced economy, grows to be the habit of his life, so that even if
he becomes well-to-do, or even rich, he distrusts exceedingly the
wisdom of any expenditure save his own.

A mechanic, or a man in any small line of business, must trust his
wife with the disbursement of a certain part of the family income. It
passes through her hands in the way of housekeeping, and the
management of it exercises and develops her faculties; but the wife of
the farmer has no such interest. The farm is expected to supply the
family living, and this blessed fact becomes almost a curse when it
deprives the wife of the mental stimulus incident to the management of
resources.

Added to this there is often, at least through the winter, partial or
complete isolation from neighbourly or public interests. The great
crops of the country are produced under circumstances which
necessitate distance from even the most limited social centres, and
that the farmer's wife suffers from this we know, not only from
observation, but from the statistics of insane asylums. And here I am
tempted to quote from a letter of a close student of farmhouse life in
the West. She writes:

"That the farmer himself, as isolated and hard worked, makes no such
record, I believe due to the mental tonic, the broadening influence
that comes from a sense of responsibility in life's larger affairs.
The woman works like a machine, irresponsible as to final results; the
man like a thinking, planning, responsible, independent human being."

This seems to me a very fair statement of the case. The woman, who
misses social companionship, and who has not the saving influence of
administration and responsibility even in her own household, is
narrowed to a very small point in life's affairs, and it is inevitable
that she should suffer from it. The variety of her work also has
dwindled. Cooking and house-cleaning follow each other in monotonous
routine, with too much of it at planting and harvest seasons and too
little at others. She has not even the pleasure of comparison and
emulation in her daily work; it neither exercises her faculties nor
stimulates her thought.

During the winter months she has abundant leisure for a harvest of her
own, in some interesting manufacture adapted to her education and
circumstances, and in the prosecution of these she would be brought
into a bond of common interest with other women. So far I have spoken
only of the individual and personal reasons for which certain domestic
and artistic industries well might be encouraged; but the public and
economic reasons are easy to find.

In looking at the variety and bulk of our national imports, we may be
surprised to see how large a proportion of them are of domestic
origin. In fact, nearly everything which comes under the head of
artistic products is the result of domestic industry. The beauty and
simplicity of many of these things is surprising, and yet they have
required neither unusual talent or careful training. They are simply
the result of the _habit_ of production, and their value is in the
personal expression we find in them. They have always this advantage
over mechanical manufacture, and can be safely relied upon to find a
market in the face of close mechanical imitation.

Among these domestic products we shall find the laces of all
countries, Ireland, Belgium, France, Italy, Sweden and Russia
contributing this beautiful manufacture, from finest to coarsest
quality. It is as common a process as knitting in the homes of many
countries, and the fact of it being successfully taught in the Indian
cabins of the far West proves that it is not a difficult
accomplishment. Embroideries, in all countries but our own, are common
and profitable home productions; and when we come to hand-weavings the
variety is infinite. In practical England, the value of hand-weavings
in linens has led to the introduction of small "parlour lo