Make a Rag Ball

1st things 1st you need rags.  I like to use old clothes, towels, socks, curtains (no rubber backing to them), old fabric,  and ANYTHING ELSE I GET MY HAND ON.  I love to take fabric and recycle them into Rag Rugs.   My favorite fabric is polyester.  I'm a Polyester NUT.  The fabric don't fray and wont fade.  They make nice rag rugs.  Cotton sheets can sometimes be a mess.  But I will do it.  I don't like jeans I find them boring.  Just a plain rug.  I like color in my life.  If you ever come see me at a craft show or tractor show I will be colorful. 

OK lets get to business on making a rag ball and talk about fabric some other day. 

My husband hands me his jeans and says "Here you can put this in a rug."  So I gut them.  As you can see in the pic below that the beside the pocket of the jeans is ripped.  So they will be recycled into a rug instead of going to your local landfill.  I always think oh all the clothes that get thrown away and fill the landfill up.  I could just make into rugs. 



Cutting the seams out



This goes to the landfill

  I have cut out the pockets and I always just think oh How much am I getting from those pockets.  Some people do gut out the pockets.  They are a pain to take the pockets off.  Lazyness out of me. 


This is what goes into the rug.  Then you have to get the cutter or cut them by hand I cut them around 3/4" wide.   I use a cutter.  I cut everything else by hand and  rip the cotton sheets up.  It all depends on how thick you want you rug to be.  Cut a strip and twist the fabric if its pencil size.  That is what I go off of.  I usually cut polyester 1 1/2" wide, sheets around 2" to 2 1/2" wide and  blankets depends on the thickness of the blanket.  


This is some denim strips

This is more then you get from a pair of jeans

Next step is Sew all those strips.  I usually have a 20 gallon plastic container full of denim. 
There is allot of different ways to sew your strips.  I will show the the other way I sew blankets later.  I sew those differnt then this way.

                                                           Lay two strips out like this. 

                                                         






Over lap them about 1 1/2"

                                                             Then fold them in 1/2

                                      Then start at the beging where the fabric is on top.  Kind of see

                                         Then I sew a U shape from both ends.  Your 1 1/2" lap

Then I just keep adding more denim and keep on sewing till you run out of rags.  then at the end I will cut in between them and wrap them all up into a ball.  Sometimes I will just stop and start making a ball then keep sewing on it.  I like to make my balls big.  Bigger ball more matching rugs.  

                                                     This a pic of some of my rag balls