spun from coarse flax and hemp. I have several
delightful bags about four feet long and two feet wide, of rather
closely woven pure white homespun linen, not as heavy, however, as
crash. They have the date of their manufacture, 1789, and the initials
of the weaver, and have linen tapes woven in at each side. They are used
every spring--packed with furs and blankets and placed in cedar chests,
and with such usage will easily round out another century.

The product of these hand-looms which has lingered longest in country
use, especially in the Northern states, and which is the sole product of
all the hand-looms that I know to be set up and in use in New England
(except one notable example to which I will refer hereafter), is the rag
carpet. It is still in constant demand and esteem on farms and in small
villages and towns, and is an economical and thrifty, and may be a
comely floor-covering. The accompanying illustration of a woman weaving
rag carpet on an old hand-loom is from a fine photograph taken by Mrs.
Arthur Sewall of Bath, Maine, and gives an excellent presentment of the
machine and the process.

The warp of these carpets was, in olden times, a strong, heavy flaxen
thread. To-day it is a heavy cotton twine bought machine-spun in balls
or hanks. The weft or rilling is narrow strips of all the clean and
vari-colored rags that accumulate in a household.

The preparing of this filling requires considerable judgment. Heavy
woollen cloth should be cut in strips about half an inch wide. If there
were sewn with these strips of light cotton stuff of equal width, the
carpet would prove a poor thing, heavy in spots and slimsy in others.
Hence lighter stuffs should be cut in wider strips, as they can then be
crowded down by the batten of the loom to the same width and substance
as the heavy wools. Calicoes, cottons, all-wool delaines, and lining
cambrics should be cut in strips at least an inch wide. These strips, of
whatever length they chance to be, are sewn into one continuous strip,
which is rolled into a hard ball weighing about a pound and a quarter.
It is calculated that one of these balls will weave about a yard of
carpeting. The joining must be strongly and neatly done and should not
be bunchy. An aged weaver who had woven many thousand yards of carpeting
assured me the prettiest carpets were always those in which every
alternate strip was white or very light in color. Another thrifty way of
using old material is