How To Do it yourself

This little booklet on how to weave seats for chairs has no copyright date or publication information, but it appears to be quite old, possibly from the 1940's or 50's. Surprisingly, the company that published it (H.H. Perkins Co. est. 1917) is still in the business of supplying tools and materials for seat weaving and general basketry. The booklet is reproduced here in its entirety, except that some of the illustrations have been hand colored to make the details easier to see, and a few extra illustrations added to clarify difficult steps.

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"The addition of a handsome, handmade article to the home is always a cause for pride. To be able to accomplish this easily and with satisfying results every time, is almost unbelievable. But such is the case when you follow these simple instructions for braiding a rug."

Here is a web page with the basic instructions for designing and making oval, round and square braided rugs. An additional web page located here is lacking instructions, but does have a nice series of photographs of making a round braid rug from start to finish. These two web pages, taken together, complement each other and give you everything you need to know to make your own braid rug.

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This conversion does not quite give you a complete wash cycle, but is used for the spin cycle only, to replace a hand wringer. The author washes his clothes in a commercially made hand-operated washing machine and then does the spin cycles in this pedal-powered contraption.

"Examining the construction of the salad spinner, I realized I needed a giant perforated metal tub that I could spin inside a solid tub so that the water forced out of the laundry through centripetal force would collect on the inner wall of the solid tub, then drain out the bottom, instead of flying all around the room. ... So my strategy was to adapt a broken washing machine to my specific purpose of spinning clothes."

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