Knitted Rag Rug

Last summer I visited the Lower Lake School house Museum with Rosy. As part of the kitchen display, circa 1890, I saw a large basket of cotton rag balls, strips of different colored fabric sewn end to end and wound into balls, sometimes 6" in size. They looked something like this.

Picture from the Internet

What are these for? In the basket was a partially knit rag rug. (!) I was intrigued. I decided to see if I could reproduce the art.

I cut the strips 1 and 1/2" using my rotary cutter. The museum had a device mounted on the kitchen table with a hand crank that rotated a wheel against a metal platform. Could that have been their rotary cutter? I wish I'd taken a picture of the tool. There were strips of fabric there for you to experiment with. It didn't cut worth a rip!

I had noted the display used size 11 knitting needles, so I cast on, figuring how many stitches to the inch and multiplying to create a rug two feet wide. This is turning out to be a great stash buster project, I can't believe how much fabric is going into it! I'm clearing out fabric from the 80's, 90's and 00's. It's great!

What was once done out of necessity and thrift is now being done for the love of color and a refreshed fabric collection.