How I Finish My Rugs or Carpets - Photo-heavy!

Here's hoping this is of interest to you, my readers. Over the years, one of the refrains I hear all too often at miniature shows in my part of the world, is "I can do that myself, and it will be way cheaper". Minimum wage here in my province is around $13.00 per hour. It takes me an hour, on average, to work a square inch (2.5 x 2.5 cm cm) of carpet  or rug, depending on the intricacy of the pattern and the colour changes. This rug measures 4 5/8" x 7 1/8" (11.7 x 18.2 cm), not including the fringe, representing about $375.00 hours worth of embroidery work. The edging would be another $39.00, and the finishing and  fringing a similar amount. We are looking at upwards of $450.00 for the work alone. As costs of thread and backing aren't huge, I'll forgo material costs here.

Offered for sale in my part of the world, I would charge $75.00 - more than that people would not pay. Hmmm! Here's how it's done:

The edges of the embroidery have been trimmed, and the corners mitered and stitched down. 

( The photos insist on being vertical, so I'm sorry, we can't figure out how to get the photos to behave. I've gone to the editing function and flipped and saved them but it isn't carrying over to the blog.) Anyways, the edges are then sewn down using a herringbone stitch, which is flexible; this is important because the continental stitch, the main one used in the rug, pulls on the bias. It is necessary, once in a while, to re-align the sides by pulling and then gently pressing with a steam iron. The diagram for this stitch is in the book, which is of course sideways.... The red centre of the rug is worked in basket-weave stitch, done diagonally and alternating vertical and horizontal rows, which minimizes the bias stretch of the canvas.

This is a view of the long-arm cross-stitch I use for the edges; it gives a braided effect, helps with a crisp folded edge, and doesn't show any of the white background fabric when the carpet is on the floor.

Another vertical photo! I give up. The fringe is formed by wrapping floss around a ruler, and then cutting it off along one edge of that.

This one remained horizontal! (There are gremlins in my computer for sure.) Front side of the carpet, with some of the cut floss fringes. These still have to be separated into bundles of 3 strands of floss each, see below.

 I lay these out on my knee.

Each little bundle of 3 floss strands is doubled, pulled through 2 threads of the edge canvas, and then pulled through the loop formed, using a very tiny crochet hook. These fringes are placed in every second hole in the canvas.

We flipped this one, but it wants to be vertical. Oh well. The fringes are all in place, but are way too long; the next step is trimming them.

The fringes are brushed out nice and straight with a toothbrush, then taped in place, ready for cutting to scale fringe size. Below is a photo of the advantage of doing it this way.

The cut-off bits of floss stick to the masking tape, making them very neat and tidy and easy to dispose of!

And this is the finished rug. Altogether, I spent about 5 hours today, finishing the braided effect edge, preparing and placing the fringe, and bringing things to this point. And my customers balk at spending $75.00 for all this work....

Many miniature rugs have fringes made of frayed out fabric, glued on to the ends. Many also have glued hems, rather than sewn ones. I find that glue eventually darkens and ruins the work, and prefer to work with an eye to the longevity of my handwork. I enjoy seeing the lovely little carpets and rugs grow as I work them, which is probably why I continue making them....

Hope you found this photo essay, gremlins and all, an interesting one! I now deserve a cup of tea and a cookie.