Welcome to my blog. Here is a newspaper article about me and one of my hobbies
Published December 04, 2006
From RAGS to RUGS
Star Beacon
HOME-GROWN BUSINESS : Geneva Township woman weaves a home-based business on her porch By CARL E. FEATHER Lifestyle Editor
BAM, BAM. The windows rattled and the old wooden loom shuddered as Tina Raleigh slammed the loom's beater against it's beam.
"I like it nice and tight," Raleigh said as she depressed a peddle and navigated the wooden shuttle and it's tail of frilly, cotton weft between the warp strings.
BAM, BAM.
Raleigh doesn't count the number of times she repeats the process of weaving and beating before a rug is completed on the roll. Her family - husband Kyle, son Chris and daughter Abby - probably have a better idea.
"There are times I get up early in the morning (to weave) and they will say 'Hey, we're trying to sleep,'" says Raleigh, who owns Tina's Rag Rugs, 4627 North Ridge East, Geneva.
Although there is a sign in the front yard of her house, Raleigh does most of her selling at craft shows. She works a full-time job, which makes keeping business hours difficult. Further, her side-porch studio is not set up for retail.
Since launching her business three months ago, Raleigh has worked a craft show every weekend except three. She's sold more than 75 rugs in that period, an encouraging number.
"I thought I'd try it," Raleigh says. "I did really well, better than expected."
Raleigh says she decided to start selling her rugs at shows because family members for whom she made rugs encouraged her to get into the circuit. As she's attended craft shows, Raleigh has come to realize that her product is quite unique.
"At the shows I've done, there's not been anybody else with these rugs," she says. Indeed, Raleigh says that she's been able to get into shows that were otherwise already filled because her product is so unique.
Raleigh launched her business at the craft show held in Wayne Township over Labor Day weekend. "I went with 20 rugs and I came home with four," she says.
Many of the local shows were already filled by the time she started calling coordinators, so Raleigh branched out into northwest Pennsylvania, where her sister lives, to find open venues. Most of the shows have been good for her, but when she hits a show where shoppers aren't in a buying mood, it can be a very long day or weekend.
"I think of the laundry I have do at home or that I could be doing some rugs," she says.
Raleigh, 37, started making her own rag rugs several years ago because she couldn't find a source the rugs, which fit well with country decor. "I like these kinds of rugs a lot, but I had a hard time finding them. The pastor who married us at Perry Christian Church said he knew of a loom he would sell me," Raleigh says.
The loom came with a basic instruction book on how to set it up; Raleigh learned to weave by sitting in on a Happy Hookers session at the church one afternoon. The Happy Hookers are volunteers who make rag rugs to raise missions money.
"They showed me how to make the rugs and I've been making them ever since," Raleigh says.
Working on a ragged edge
Traditionally, rag rugs were made from clothing that had been worn to a frazzle. The thrifty wife would cut the old jeans and shirts into long strips an inch or two wide, sew the strips end to end and roll them into a ball. When a sufficient quantity of this weft was thus produced, it would be taken to the rug maker, who wove it between heavy strings to make a sturdy rug.
"They last for years," says Raleigh, listing the benefits of a rag rug. "Even after a lot of washing and drying. A lot of people like them because they don't have that plastic or rubber backing that starts to come off after a few washings."
They're also American made from all natural materials. However, despite the "rag" in her business name, Tina seldom makes her rugs from strips of exhausted duds - it's too time consuming to cut and sew all those strips when you're making them to re-sell.
Rather, she purchases cotton weft of various widths, colors and textures. The weft is fabric mill trimmings that works fine for rugs. She purchases weft by the pound and never knows for certain what she'll find in the box when it arrives.
"I cannot call up and say 'I want certain colors,'" she says.
This contributes to the uniqueness of each rug or short run of rugs from a batch of weft. Raleigh says her most popular rug is 24 inches wide and 36 inches long, although she also makes rugs that are shorter, longer and wider. The 24-by-36-inch rug sells for just $15.
"I charge $2.50 a square foot," she says.
That's a low price considering the durability of the product and all the work that goes into producing it. Raleigh says it starts with placing the warp on the loom, a tedious process that can take four to six hours. Her rugs have 24 strings to the inch; thus, to make a 24-inch-wide rug, Tina and Kyle must thread 576 strings on the heddle, which is raised and separated through the action of two foot peddles.
Kyle built a device to hold the bolts of string while they are being threaded through the loom. "That's the biggest thing about this, is the set up," says Raleigh.
Once the loom is set up, Raleigh can produce a number of rugs on one long stretch, up to the limit of the take-up roll and supply of string. The rugs are then cut apart and the ends tied off - 24 strings to one knot - to create the fringe.
"To stand here and weave one rug, if I were to stay at it, would take an hour," says Raleigh. However, taking into account all the other work that goes into making a rug, the time invested is closer to three hours.
That's time Raleigh must find between her working her full-time job and being a wife and mother. She works for G.T. Management in Madison, a payroll and financials services company. "If I have a real stressful day, I can come home, work out here and beat out my frustration on these rugs," she says.
Now that the rugs have become a business, however, they themselves can contribute a degree of stress. If she has a particularly successful craft show, Raleigh has to work late into the night weaving more rugs for the next show. She tries to have 50 rugs for every show, enough to fill the racks Chris and Kyle built.
Encouraged by the response to her rugs, Raleigh recently purchased a second, smaller loom. Her daughter has started weaving on that.
Looking ahead to next year, Raleigh would like to develop a Web site from which to sell her rugs. Raleigh already has plans for her profits - funding her passion for quilting.
"I would like to do this full time, but I think this will always be part time because I'm trying to get a quilting machine," she says.
