Rag Rugs: Further Resources

• Step-by-Step Tutorial: Visit this page for videos and a supply list to use in your classroom. Our Rag Rug How-To offers two options for making rag rugs, a Prodder Rug and a Knotted Rag Rug. 

• Additional Resources, curated by Crafting Communities research assistants: Consult a one-page info sheet with a list of scholarly readings, blogs and websites, instructional videos, extant examples, and 19th-century tutorials.

• Reflections on Critical Craft: What can students learn from this activity? Read our research assistants’ reflections on their experiences with the Crafting Communities Prodder Rag Rug tutorial.

• Victorian Samplings Podcast S1, Ep6 (“Paper Worlds”): Learn about Victorian textile waste from an interview with Deborah Wynne. 

• Victorian Samplings Podcast S2, Episode 3 (“Textile Stories”): Listen to guests Brandi Goddard and Dina Kalman Spoerl talk about the history of spinning wheels and about how fabric scraps feature in a nineteenth-century woman's detailed record of her life. 

• Learn about Victorian textile waste by examining and reading about Charlotte Brontë’s “Little Book” in the Victorian Things exhibit.

• Explore the work of contemporary artist Harmony Hammond, who created a series of artworks called Floorpieces that drew on rag-rug techniques. Read about this series in Julia Bryan-Wilson’s article “Queerly Made: Harmony Hammond’s Floorpieces,” published in The Journal of Modern Craft in 2009.

• Explore the work of contemporary artist Daniel Fountain, who uses discarded materials and rag rugging techniques in the artwork Nest. 

• Check out our page of sample syllabi and assignments for more ideas about how to integrate rag rugging into your humanities class.