For the "Are Ye Patriotic?" rug I wanted to add a braided border but I have not mastered the art of traditional braiding. My dear friend Dianne Tobias, one of the authors of Combining Rug Hooking & Braiding: Basics, Borders, & Beyond spent a day showing a few of us how to braid several weeks ago (there is a past blog post on this too). The whole time we worked on braiding I thought it was more than I would ever easily conquer. Has anyone else found this to be true? Maybe it was because we worked with wider strips of wool and it had to be turned correctly to get a good finish to the braid and getting an even width to the braid was a big challenge to me. Maybe it was the issue of preparing the wool strips for braiding, or maybe it was that I'm too clumsy to do traditional braiding.
I'm a bit of a renegade I guess, but the whole time we were braiding, I kept thinking there has to be an easier way to do this braiding stuff and I'm going to figure it out. So I did, and I added it to my "Are Ye Patriotic?" rug and I'm very happy with it. I share the technique I used in a tutorial that is part of the paper pattern for this rug hooking / needle punch pattern. Here are a couple pictures of my braid in progress.
I like the finished look and I am going to keep working on my style of braiding. I know it might curl Dianne's hair when she sees it, but I take a primitive approach and it is indeed primitive (and easy!).
