New Rug for Christmas

When I was a little girl we always made a new rug for Christmas. My mother used to buy a large piece of hessian and bring in all the old clothes she could find. All the children would cut up the clothes into 3in. strips and separate them into their colours. We used a peg to make the rug. It was a wooden handled hook with a sort of clip at the end. We used to put a strip of material in the clip and thread it through the hessian with the hook.

First of all we had to have a pattern showing where the different colours would go. My mother loved red and that was usually in the middle. The children all took tums and did it till they got fed up. As Christmas approached we would hurry up with it so that it would be ready in time.

My mother used to love Christmas and used to make the house very festive. The new rug was put down and we all used to admire the bit we had done. We always had a new white tablecloth and a tin of` salmon for tea on Christmas Eve. It was a very happy time and my mother was so proud to have her family around her.