al
weaving. After this is learned it rests with one's self to become a
good weaver, a practical dyer, and to put colors together which are
both harmonious and effective.

What I have chiefly tried to show is how to get proper materials and
how to use them to the best advantage. I think it is safe to say that
no domestic art is capable of such important results from a pecuniary
point of view, or so important an extension in the direction of
practical art. Where it is used as an art-process and an interesting
occupation, by women of leisure, it is capable of the finest results,
and there is no reason why these results should not become a matter of
business profit.

Rag carpets have generally been woven of rags cut from any old
garments cast aside by the household--coats and trousers too old for
patching, sheets and pillow-cases too tender to use, calico, serge,
bits of woolen stuffs old and new, went into the carpet basket, to be
cut or torn into strips, sewed indiscriminately together, and rolled
into balls until there should be enough of them for the work of the
loom. When this time came the loom would be warped with white cotton
or purple yarn, dyed with "sugar paper" or logwood, and the carpet
woven. Even with this entire carelessness as to any other result than
that of a useful floor covering, the rag carpet, with its "hit or
miss" mixture, was not a bad thing; and a very small degree of
attention has served to give it a respectable place in domestic
manufactures. But it is capable of being carried much farther; in
fact, I know of no process which can so easily be made to produce
really good and beautiful results as rag carpet weaving.

The first material needed is what are called carpet warps, and these
can be purchased in different weights and sizes and more or less
reliable colours in every country store, this fact alone showing the
prevalence of home weaving, since the yarns are not--at least to my
knowledge--used for any other purpose.

The cost of warp, dyed or undyed, depends upon the quantity required,
or, in other words, upon its being purchased at wholesale or retail.
At retail it costs twenty cents per pound, and at wholesale sixteen.
To buy of a wholesale dealer one must be able to order at least a
hundred pounds, and as this would weave but a hundred and fifty rugs
it would not be too large a quantity to have on hand for even a
moderate amount of weaving. These prices refer only to ordinary cotton