You may arrange the colors according to your taste, so as to make a star in the middle of the rug, if that figure strikes your fancy, and let the ground work be brown or drab and the border black. This is rather a tedious way of using up bright colors, but it has a pretty effect, and when well done the work lasts a long time. Upon this foundation mark out with red chalk or a carpenter's pencil the pattern you wish to work into the rug. This you may take from another rug, or imitate a worsted pattern or a bouquet of flowers in wallpaper. The rags are to be torn or cut into strips half an inch wide, more or less, according to their thickness of texture, and assorted by their colors, all the reds together, all the greens, and all the blues.
Any blacksmith can make one.
Having everything in readiness, the foundation, the rags, and the needle, you are to begin by taking the hook in the right hand, and push it from the upper side down where the strip which you hold in your left hand will meet it and be drawn up through the foundation. Let the end be left on the other side a quarter of an inch, then, two or three threads away, draw up the strip again, so that it will form a loop a quarter of an inch long, and so on until the end of the strip is reached, which end you will draw through and leave on the upper side. Then take another strip and proceed in the same way. The length of the strips is a matter of no importance. All bright bits of scarlet or blue or crimson, if but an inch in length, may be worked into a rug of this kind.