Journal
Rag Rugs, Remembered: Creativity, Memory, and the Quiet Legacy of Women’s Work
There’s something deeply evocative about a rag rug.
For me, they conjure childhood memories—of my gran cutting up old clothes in her Northeast home, of hands busy at the hearth as winter crept in. Every year, she’d make a new rug. Not as art, but as necessity. And yet, looking back, it was art. Quiet, domestic, fiercely resourceful art.
Rag rugs are humble. Scraps turned into something sturdy, beautiful, and useful. And lately, my fingers have been itching to make one. Partly due to the powerful exhibition I saw recently—Winifred Nicholson: Cumbrian Rag Rugs at the Tullie Museum in Carlisle—and partly because I’ve inherited my gran’s rug frame. A piece of family history, waiting to come alive again.
Tiger, worked by Janet Heap early 1960s
A Different Kind of Creativity
The exhibition explores how Winifred Nicholson—a respected artist—collaborated with rural Cumbrian women from the 1920s through the 1980s to create striking rugs. Though Nicholson provided loose design ideas, the true artistry lay in the hands of makers like Mary Buick. Her work, full of precision and pictorial nuance, told stories through stitches. Yet in art history, her name is often lost behind Nicholson’s.
This discrepancy matters.
It reflects how society has long undervalued women’s domestic creativity. Rug-making, quilting, embroidery—seen as craft, not art. Functional, not visionary. And yet, these works were acts of deep care, resourcefulness, and yes—creative genius.
Sheep, worked by Mary Bewick to design by Winifred Nicholson 1960s
Making With What You Have
British rag rugs evolved from scarcity. No pre-planned palettes or bought-in fabrics—just old coats, worn sheets, a t-shirt you no longer needed. In the Northeast, these were called clippy mats or proggy rugs, and they followed simple geometric designs. My gran always used diamonds—drawn on old hessian sacks, filled in with whatever colours were on hand.
In contrast, American traditions turned rug making into a designed-from-scratch craft. But in the UK, it was about making do. And in that “making do,” women made beauty.
Tractor and Haycart, worked by Mrs Hall to design by Jovan Nicholson 1967
Creativity as Reclamation
Watching the exhibition’s rugs—some damaged, worn, obviously lived with—was unexpectedly moving. They hadn’t been preserved behind glass. They’d been stepped on, warmed toes, sat beside fires. They were loved, and used, and that’s part of their magic.
It reminded me that creativity doesn’t need polish. It needs space. Time. Willing hands.
And it reminded me that our making—however small or irregular—is a way of reclaiming ourselves. Especially for women whose time, historically and still, has so often been claimed by others.
What’s Next
I’ll be making my own rug soon. I don’t have long strips of wool, so it’ll be a clippy mat—shaggy, abstract, full of texture and colour. I’ll be working with what I have, like my gran did. Like so many did.
If you’ve made a rug, or remember someone who did, I’d love to hear. If you’ve been to the exhibition, let me know what stayed with you. Creativity is always richer when it’s shared.
Making a Quilted Envelope Bag: A Slow Stitching Project in Vintage Linen
Last year I spent a week on the west coast of Scotland with the Australian textile artist India Flint. One of the projects we worked on was something she called sashiko felting — sandwiching sheep’s fleece between layers of silk, hand-stitching into the cloth, then felting it by slamming it against rocks and washing it in hot water. What emerged was dense, soft, textured. The piece I made became a vessel, now on my sunroom windowsill, where it holds the small leftovers from knitting socks.
A container made of memory and wool.
A few months later, on a quiet evening, I came across the quilted envelope bags of The Red Embroidery on Pinterest. I was drawn to their simplicity — softened corners, visible stitches, a sense that they had been held and handled and loved. They felt like letters to oneself, sewn instead of written.
When it came time to shape the final project for Stitched, the seasonal stitching course in The Studio, these two ideas began to converge. I wanted to end the journey with something both tactile and tender — a project that brought together skills handed down, fragments of old materials, and the quiet comfort of making by hand.
What emerged is this: a quilted envelope bag, stitched slowly from vintage linen, wool blanket offcuts, and leftover threads. It’s a soft, handmade pouch for carrying small essentials — or simply to hold special things. You might use it as a stitched wallet, a fabric keyring pouch, or an envelope for letters, notes, or threads.
It’s worked using the simple, steady hand-stitches we’ve been exploring together. This is a slow stitching project in every sense — designed to be picked up and put down in pockets of time. There is no rush, no perfect outcome. Just cloth, thread, and intention.
For those who’d like to work with the exact materials I’ve used — a vintage linen base, soft wool felt, lace-making thread, long darning needle, and carefully chosen fixings — I’ve created a small batch of supply kits. These aren’t mass-produced; they’re assembled slowly from things I’ve gathered over time. You’ll find the Studio Companion Kit here, if it feels like something you’d like to bring into your hands.
What would you place inside your envelope?
Botanical Dye Plants: Gorse
Last year, walking along the banks of Loch Aline in the West of Scotland with the Australian eco-print artist India Flint, we passed some gorse bushes — bright with their lipped yellow flowers, buzzing with bees.
To me, they’ve always been a symbol of Scotland’s rural crofting traditions. Gorse was once woven into daily life: used to pin clothes to dry, for dyeing wool, for kindling quick, hot fires to bake bannocks. Its alkaline ash mixed with fat made soap. But for India, the same plant conjured a very different story — a noxious pest overrunning swathes of Australia, all prickles and peril, a fire hazard, and officially listed as a notifiable weed in many states.
Both truths hold. Many of the people who emigrated to Australia came from crofts like these — now vanished, marked only by scattered stones and a clutch of gorse. Carrying cuttings with them across the seas would have been a way to bring something useful — and familiar — into the unknown. The scent of coconut that drifts from its blooms in spring and summer must have stirred memories of hillsides at home.
As the plant’s usefulness faded — whirligigs and pegs gave way to tumble dryers, electric ovens replaced open fires, and synthetic dyes took hold — the gorse grew unchecked. In Scotland, it swallowed pastures; in Australia, it threatened lives.
Textiles by Gloria Pastore
Within the fortifications of Naples, the Castel Sant’Elmo, there is a modern art gallery - the collection spans from 1910 to the present - mainly gifts and loans, mainly works by Italian artists.
In it I was drawn to this work by the Naples based artist Gloria Pastore (b. 1946). It is called Memories, Italy and dates from 1982-3.
It is an old piece of silk, woven by the San Leucio Silk factory, and then embellished with all kinds of ephemera
Letters, postcards, cut out illustrations
These appear to be stuck directly onto the silk
with added prints over the top - there are red washi tape like marks, pieces where it looks as though a print roller has been used.
there is an emphasis on romance, letters, memory.
It made me think of all the pieces of sewing ephemera which we have been discussing in the Stitched course - transfers, button cards along with old photographs and letters.
There are small pieces of maps and rubbings which must have been done from some kind of relief - perhaps a printing plate.
all gently altered and pieced together.
The piece was worked as a loose textile and then mounted, stretched taut, between a backing board and a plexiglass cover.
Recovering an antique sewing box
This is a tale of two items languishing for years in my sewing room.
The first a battered sewing stool - ripped red silk with calico showing through, broken hinges, torn insides. It is a large fabric footstool, possibly a seat. The inside had baggy stretched silk pockets, braid held on with studs.
The second the beginnings of a hand pieced hexagon quilt, made by my Mum in 1980s and passed onto me to do something with.
I talked about the quilt and not knowing what to do with it, in this video.
I find hand me down unfinished projects difficult - there isn’t the impetus there to keep going that I have with my own project - so both things hung around, in a very guilt inducing way, until I had to clear the cupboard, saw them together and thought “I wonder . . . .”
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