Penny Rug Stitch

For centuries women have hoarded scraps of wool and fabric to cut into shapes and sew by hand to charming penny rugs.

Penny rug stitch.

The makings of a penny rug. Penny purse the tutorial. Penny rug tutorial part 1 2 3. The main stitch you need to know to stitch a penny rug is called a blanket stitch.

It looks like this. Bright colors of thread that were different from the piece of fabric being stitched helped the pattern to stand out even more and also added another creative layer to the piece. A penny rug is a decoration made of stitched together coin shaped fabric scraps. Where do your talents lie.

Do you want this to be the ultimate rug or are you new to penny rugs and want to keep it simple choose this method. Use a back stitch to begin. Blanket stitch joining thread. Folk lore attributes w ool applique penny rugs to table rugs created with woolen fabrics using coins or pennies as the pattern template often seen on vintage pieces dating from the civil war era.

Make your own thimble. In the 1800s starting around the time of the civil war thrifty homemakers would use scraps of wool or felted wool from old clothing blankets and hats to create designs for mats or rugs using coins as templates they created circles and each piece was then stitched in blanket stitch fashion. Scraps of wool fabric and felt are cut and sewn together with bold blanket stitches into decorative designs. Designs were stitched with simple blanket stitch and other embroidery stitches and finished with a tongue.

I would machine stitch a lining to the back and then go around the edges by machine or by hand with rug binding. It is a great stitch for a lot of other things besides penny rugs. Com lulu is at littleluluscrap. Although any style of embroidery stitch could be used the one most commonly used to applique the individual pieces of fabric in the penny rug was the blanket stitch.

As with other folk art everyday life design motifs are popular on original rugs. This is so much easier to make than what i thought. Sewing penny rugs is a time honored craft. This is another technique and more time consuming.

There is a video here that will take you through the steps to make this stitch. Here are some more candle mats from our swap over at yourpaperpantry ning.