Designer rug made from old clothes
Designed for show at the Milan Furniture Fair, this rag rug is made from old clothes.
08/05/2018
Hard to believe that this beautiful rug is made entirely from old clothes. The design is meant to replicate the curves of a winding, path with the intention being to invite you to follow the curves. The team at Re Rag Rug, a Swedish design firm, designed the rug for display at the Milan Furniture Show.
Re Rag Rug is a design firm that explores the possibilities of rugs by designing a range of 12 unique rugs in different textile mediums. The methods used to construct the rugs range from sewing and crochet, to macrame and applique. For all their rugs this design firm uses material waste; textiles and fabrics that would otherwise be thrown away.
With so much of our clothing ending up on the trash heap when discarded, Re Rag Rug is an example of how you can take seemingly worthless materials and give them a new life. Many of the rugs they have made do not require special tools and are made using materials that are ecologically sustainable.
Re Rag Rug believe that rugs protect us from cold floors, they are an essential element in interior design, and yet they should be able to withstand traffic and daily wear. As such, the rug is the ultimate textile furniture.
The entire process began with cutting thousands of pieces of clothing into strips and arranging these by colour and type. The strips needed to be long enough to fill the width of the rug, and if not, they would be used as decoration.
After spending hours working on a design, small batches of joined strips were laid out in the desired shape.
These smaller batches were then joined together by hand, using needle and thread. The team found this part of the process heavy and uncomfortable, and needles kept breaking. However, the joy of seeing the design grow was definitely worth all the hard work.
The textile rug gives clear assosiations to a well-used woven rag rug, as traditionally used Sweden. However, the Re Rag Rug version has an expression of its own due to the material and techniques used and of course the wavy shape.
When sewing together enough rows, decorative elements are introduced. The 'eyes' are added to the coloured stripes to give more dimension, colour and texture to the finished rug.
Each of the twelve rugs produced by the design team have a story of their own. This particular rug represents a path through the rose garden.
With the individual panels sewn together the backing was stitched in place.
The rug was then trimmed to shape.
An additional backing was added to the finished rug to give it strength and durability - an essential element of any rug.
The backing was sewn on and final edging done to the sides and end of the rug.
