make a rug five feet wide by eight feet long; or if
two eight-foot lengths are sewn together, with a foot-wide border, it
will make an eight-by-eight centre rug. The border should be of black
or very dark coloured filling. In making a bordered rug, two dark ends
must be woven on the central length of the rug--that is, one foot of
black or dark rags can be woven on each end and six feet of the "hit
or miss" effect in the middle. This gives a strip of eight feet long,
including two dark ends. The separate narrow width, one foot wide and
sixteen feet in length, must be added to this, eight feet on either
side. The border must be very strongly sewn in order to give the same
strength as in the rest of the rug.

The same plan can be carried out in larger rugs, by sewing breadths
together and adding a border, but they are not easily lifted, and are
apt to pull apart by their own weight. Still, the fact remains that
very excellent and handsome rugs can be made from rags, in any size
required to cover the floor of a room, by sewing the breadths and
adding borders, and if care and taste are used in the combinations as
good an effect can be secured as in a much more costly flooring.

The ultimate success of all these different methods of weaving rag
rugs depends upon the amount of beauty that can be put into them. They
possess all the necessary qualities of durability, usefulness and
inexpensiveness, but if they cannot be made beautiful other estimable
qualities will not secure the wide popularity they deserve. Durable
and beautiful colour will always make them salable, and good colour is
easily attainable if the value of it is understood.

There are two ways of compassing this necessity. One is to buy, if
possible, in piece ends and mill waste, such materials as Turkey red,
blue and green ginghams, and blue domestics and denims, as well as all
the dark colours which come in tailors' cuttings. The other and better
alternative is to buy the waste of white cotton mills and dye it. For
the best class of rugs--those which include beauty as well as
usefulness, and which will consequently bring a much larger price if
sold--it is quite worth while to buy cheap muslins and calicoes; and
as quality--that is, coarseness or fineness--is perfectly immaterial,
it is possible to buy them at from four to five cents per yard. These
goods can be torn lengthwise, which saves nearly the whole labor of
sewing them, and from eight to ten yards, acc