Materials

The Heart of a Fabric Rug

To get started knitting fabric rugs, you don't need a lot, and you probably have most of it already. Furthermore, it won't cost very much at all to buy anything else you need. Here are the basics: a space to work in, raw material (old clothing), a way to cut clothing into fiber strips, processed fiber (so you can start knitting when inspiration strikes), a way to store your fiber/stash so you can find it easily, and needles that feel good in your hands.

A Space to Work In

Let's start by talking about studios: art-making spaces. You can't make art unless you have the materials at hand to make it from. And you need a place to store those materials. You don't get an idea, go to the store to buy parts, and come home and make your project — at least not when you're 30 miles from the store and working in recycled material anyway. I have a business license to make and sell rugs in my home and am fortunate to be able to give over one small bedroom in my 1,400-square-foot house to textile stash. Having this studio matters a lot to me. I know that not everyone can afford to dedicate this much space to a craft, however, and fabric inventory can become a real challenge.

The solution to this challenge is to find some way to organize your growing stash. When I first started knitting rugs, I brought used clothing home, washed it, and stuffed it into pillowcases ready for processing. This worked well enough for a while, until I suddenly realized my house could be featured in a show about hoarding. It was not pretty. So I emptied all the pillowcases out, sorted the clothing into two huge piles (mostly tops and bottoms), and started processing each garment by cutting away the seams, button bands, and so on, until I had rough-shaped pieces that could be folded and stored more efficiently (what I call "flat fold"). I reduced the volume significantly by throwing away the parts that aren't useful for knitting.

The Raw Materials

Most of my rugs are made from used clothes cut into long strips of woven or knitted fiber. I also sometimes use household linens (sheets and napkins), and sometimes purchased yard goods. You can find usable fabric in a lot of places.

Where to Find Fabric

Yard sales. Visit yard sales, especially multifamily events. Show up toward the end of the morning and make an offer on "everything left over." Arrive with a great big truck to take everything. Note that you may be competing with local thrift shops, who may have made prior arrangements with the vendors. Craigslist or an equivalent is a similar source.

Thrift shops. Thrift shops in my part of the world have "bag days" or "dollar tables," when you can buy a bag full of clothing for $1 or less. Learn when these are scheduled, and plan to arrive either early or late; some thrift shops allow you to take everything left at the end of the day for even less money. (Incidentally, much of the clothing rejected by thrift shops is sold by the truckload to aggregators who ship it to developing countries, where it is processed and woven into rag rugs, which are then sold back to us at discount stores.) Look for "rag bags," and buy one to see what kinds of clothing get put into a rag bag. Some shops sort their rag bags by white or colored T-shirts. Pick the colored ones. These garments are likely to be stained and torn, but you may be able to cut around the ruined parts and still get a reasonable amount of fiber for the money.

Your friends. Tell your friends that you need old clothing, and that you don't care what shape it's in. I often come home to find bags of clothing on my doorstep.

Trash/garbage/dump. Where I live, we take our trash to a transfer station, and the county picks it up from there and takes it to the dump. Each transfer station has a swap shed, where people leave unwanted stuff that still has useful life. Much of this stuff is clothing. The swap sheds have provided me with more incoming fiber than I can knit.

Home sewers' leftovers. A source I didn't consider until well into this project was my own stash of leftover fabrics from years of making clothes. All of those bits that were too big to throw away but too small to use for anything significant can be sliced into usable strips for knitting. Consider putting a small notice up in any fabric store in your area.

Unfortunately, much of the fabric used for quilt making and most upholstery fabric is printed on one side only. If the backside has strong color (solids), you can use it. If the backside looks like the backside (that is, not as bright or colorful as the front), it's best to leave those pieces for a quilter. It has taken me several years to refine my input stream so that I no longer bring home very many garments or fabrics that don't work well. I used to actually iron yards of rayon strips so that the colorful side faced out, and the less-bright side was on the inside. I don't do that anymore. Nothing comes into the stash unless it has good color on both sides of the fabric. It doesn't have to be the same color on both sides, but it has to be useful.

What to Collect

I apply several criteria to the garments that come into my house:

* Fiber source

* Garment construction and size

* Color

Fiber Sources

Natural fibers. I prefer natural fibers and blends, including cotton, wool, silk, and blends of all of these. I'm not a fiber purist. Many polo shirts and T-shirts are cotton-poly blends, and they work just fine. Although T-shirts are usually great, those with large plastic appliqués may not knit as smoothly as all-cotton shirts in solid colors. If you have an all-natural approach to life and art, feel free to restrict yourself to these kinds of fiber. You will be able to honor your values and still make knitted rugs.

Synthetics (polyester, microfibers, and so on). Inexpensive bridesmaids' and prom dresses are often made of polyester fabric. These garments have oodles of fabric, especially if the skirt is full, and they come in great colors. Knit polyester fabrics don't hold up as well as wovens, however. Also, the chiffonlike overlays used on some dresses have not turned out to be useful. Chiffon unravels, but cutting on the bias helps. The unraveled bits get all nasty and matted up when the rug gets washed a few years down the road, which is a pity, because I'd like to make use of their colors.

Burn Tests

If you're not sure what something is made of, you can do a burn test on it. There are many kinds of burn tests, but here are the basics. Do this test over a sink, and take care that there is nothing in the area, such as a curtain or towel, that might catch fire accidentally.

Cut a small piece of fabric,...