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Weaving memories with history |
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Friday, 23 May 2008 |
By ANDREA POTEET
Staff Writer
Dressed in colonial clothes, Joyce Miller cuts strips of red, white, and blue cotton inside the Junior Fair Building of the Auglaize County Fairgrounds for what will be a patriotic rug.
Sitting in front of her, her husband, Jim Miller, weaves strips his wife has cut into a denim rug similar to the many that line the racks of their merchandise for sale at the 19th Annual Buckeye Farm Antiques show this weekend.
The Millers, of Belle Center, have joined other area merchants in selling their crafts at the antique tractor show for more than 14 years.
“We do pretty well,” Joyce Miller said. “We always want to sell more, but it’s a pretty good show.”
Joyce Miller began weaving in 1986. After the death of her mother, she was left with many of her clothes,
and a co-worker at Indian Lake School, where Miller taught for 40 years, offered to teach her how to turn the garments into rugs.
“I fell in love with weaving then,” Joyce Miller said. “I divided more clothes up and made nine identical rugs.”
Jim MIller retired from Rockland International in Canton in 1991, and his wife taught him how to weave soon after.
He said he enjoys weaving, and finds it relaxing.
“It’s more or less a hobby,” Jim Miller said. “There’s no big money to be made.”
He said the skill is fairly easy to learn, as his grandson, Cody, then 8, once weaved a rug by himself after watching his grandfather work.
At home, Joyce Miller weaves the majority of the rugs, but at shows, her husband weaves while she cuts strips of material to show shoppers how the rugs are completed.
For their fabrics, they scour garage sales for denim clothes, and friends donate old clothes.
“It’s good recycling,” Joyce Miller said. “We keep everything out of the landfills that we can.”
They use cotton, denim, polyesters, and a variety of other materials. Joyce Miller said she particularly likes making rugs out of nylon from pantyhose.
“It’s tricky because it stretches,” Joyce Miller said, “but it makes a pretty brown rug.”
The couple also gets a large portion of their materials from clients who want them to make a rug out of a deceased loved one’s clothing. They recently made a rug out of the jeans of a client’s husband.
“That’s what I think is special about it,” Joyce Miller said. “It’s just like how I started, doing my mom’s clothes.” |
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 27 May 2008 )
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