Day 7 – Braided Rug: Crafting Addy and Kirsten’s Most Iconic Accessory

Welcome back to our American Girl crafting series! If you’ve been following along, you already know that we’ve been working our way through some of the most beloved accessories and home décor pieces inspired by two of the most iconic historical characters in the American Girl collection: Addy Walker and Kirsten Larson. Today is Day 7, and we are diving into one of my absolute favorite projects yet — the braided rug.

If you’ve ever looked at the beautifully detailed accessories that come with these dolls and thought, “I could make something like that,” then you are in exactly the right place. This braided rug project is charming, surprisingly doable, and completely customizable to match whichever doll’s story speaks to your heart. Whether you’re Team Addy, Team Kirsten, or honestly just here for the crafting joy, let’s get into it.

Why a Braided Rug?

Before we jump into the how-to, let’s talk about why a braided rug makes such a meaningful craft for both Addy and Kirsten.

Kirsten Larson, the Swedish immigrant pioneer girl who came to America in 1854, would absolutely have had a braided rug in her frontier home. Scandinavian and early American settlers were famous for their resourcefulness. Nothing went to waste. Old wool clothing, worn-out blankets, and fabric scraps were all repurposed into braided and woven rugs that could last for decades. A braided rug wasn’t just a decorative item — it was a symbol of ingenuity, warmth, and making the most of what you had. For Kirsten, who crossed an ocean and endured hardships to build a new life with her family in Minnesota, a braided rug on the floor of the log home would have been both practical and precious.

Addy Walker, who escapes slavery with her mother in 1864 and builds a free life in Philadelphia, also connects beautifully to this craft. The act of creating something beautiful and functional from simple materials has deep resonance within African American quilting and textile traditions. Braiding and weaving were skills that were passed down through generations, and creating a warm, welcoming rug for a home that is truly your own carries so much meaning in Addy’s story. Making something cozy and beautiful for a space you are free to call yours — that’s powerful stuff.

So this little doll-sized braided rug? It carries a lot of heart.

What You’ll Need

One of the best things about this project is how accessible the materials are. You don’t need to run to a specialty craft store or order anything exotic online. Most of what you need might already be sitting in your fabric stash or even your rag pile.

Here’s what you’ll want to gather before you get started:

Fabric strips are the heart of this project. You’ll want fabric that has some body to it — cotton works well, as does wool if you have any old sweater fabric around. You can use fabric from a craft store, cut up old T-shirts or pillowcases, or raid your scrap bin. The key is to cut your strips into consistent widths, roughly half an inch to three-quarters of an inch wide, and long enough to work with comfortably. For a doll-sized rug, you won’t need a ton of material, so this is a perfect stash-buster project.

Scissors — sharp ones, please. Cutting fabric strips with dull scissors is the kind of experience that makes you want to give up crafting forever, and we are not doing that today.

A large-eye blunt needle or tapestry needle for sewing the braid together once you’re done. Some people prefer to use a crochet hook for this step, and that works beautifully as well.

Thread in a color that complements your fabric choices. You’ll use this to stitch the coils of braid together invisibly on the back of the rug.

Pins to hold things in place as you work.

An iron and ironing board for pressing your fabric strips before you begin, which makes the braiding process so much cleaner and easier.

Optionally, you might also want a small amount of fabric glue or fusible webbing if you’d prefer to glue rather than sew the coils together. Both methods work, though sewing gives you a more durable finished product.

Choosing Your Colors

This is where the personalization really starts, and it’s one of my favorite parts of the whole project.

For a Kirsten-inspired braided rug, think about the colors you might find in a Swedish pioneer home in 1850s Minnesota. Soft, natural tones like cream, warm tan, dusty blue, muted red, and forest green are all period-appropriate and gorgeous. Kirsten’s color palette tends toward those cozy Scandinavian hues — think the inside of a warm log cabin on a cold winter’s night. You could also look at Kirsten’s actual meet outfit or her bedding for color cues and replicate those tones in miniature for her bedroom scene.

For an Addy-inspired rug, consider the colors associated with Addy’s world in 1864 Philadelphia. Her meet dress features that beautiful cranberry red, and her accessories often incorporate rich, warm tones alongside practical creams and browns. A rug in deep red, cream, and a warm brown would look absolutely stunning in Addy’s room and would nod to the textile traditions of the era. You could also look at what colors appear throughout her books and accessories and pull from those for a cohesive, storytelling approach to your color palette.

Of course, you are not bound by historical accuracy if that’s not your priority. If your daughter (or you, no judgment here) loves lavender and mint green, make a lavender and mint green rug. The doll will love it.

Step-by-Step Instructions

Now let’s actually make this thing.

Step One: Prepare Your Fabric Strips

Start by cutting your fabric into strips. For a doll-sized braided rug, you’ll want strips that are roughly half an inch wide after folding. If you cut them at one inch wide, you can fold the raw edges toward the center and press them flat with your iron, giving you a clean strip with no fraying edges and a width of about half an inch. This extra prep step makes a significant difference in the finished look of your rug.

You can also use fabric that doesn’t fray, like fleece or felt, in which case you can skip the folding and pressing and just cut your strips to the final desired width. Felt is actually a wonderful choice for a first attempt at this project because it is so forgiving.

Cut enough strips to work in groups of three, since you’ll be braiding three at a time. It helps to have all three strips in your working braid be roughly the same length so you’re not constantly running out of one color.

Step Two: Begin the Braid

Take three strips and tie them together at one end with a simple overhand knot, or pin them securely to a pillow or your ironing board so you have something to braid against. This is the same basic three-strand braid you’ve been doing with hair since you were about six years old, so don’t let it intimidate you. Right strand over center, left strand over center, repeat.

Keep your tension even and consistent. Too loose and the finished rug will look floppy and unstructured. Too tight and the braid will curl up and be difficult to coil flat. You’re aiming for a firm, even braid that lies nice and flat when you set it down.

As your strips run out, you can add new ones by overlapping the end of the old strip with the beginning of the new one by about an inch and either hand-stitching them together or using a tiny dab of fabric glue. Try to plan your joins so they happen at a staggered point in the braid rather than all at the same spot, which keeps the braid even in thickness throughout.

Step Three: Coil and Stitch

Once you have enough braid to start shaping your rug — and for a doll-sized piece you can start coiling almost immediately — begin curving the braid into a flat oval or circle. The traditional braided rug shape is an oval, which is created by laying a straight section of braid down in the center and then coiling around it, but circles work beautifully too and are a little simpler for first-timers.

As you coil, use your needle and thread to stitch the adjacent rows of braid together on the flat underside of the rug. Work with a whipstitch, catching the loops of braid on each side and pulling them together snugly. The goal is to make stitches that are basically invisible from the top of the rug. Every few inches, flip the rug over and check that it’s lying flat. If it starts to dome upward in the center, your inner coils are too tight. If it starts to ruffle and wave around the edges, your outer coils are too loose. Adjust as you go.

This is genuinely one of those crafts where the second one you make will look significantly better than the first, so please be patient with yourself if the edges aren’t perfectly flat on your first attempt. It still counts. It is still beautiful.

Step Four: Finish the Rug

When your rug has reached the size you want — for a standard 18-inch doll, something in the range of four to six inches across makes a wonderful floor rug that fits well in a doll display — it’s time to finish off the braid.

Taper the end of the braid by gradually trimming each of the three strips shorter so that the final few inches of braid gets narrower and narrower. This helps the tail of the braid blend into the edge of the rug without creating a noticeable bump. Fold the tapered end under the edge of the rug and stitch it down firmly so nothing can unravel.

Give the finished rug a good press with your iron (use a pressing cloth if your fabric requires it), and you’re done.

Ways to Customize This Project

Once you’ve made your first braided rug and gotten the hang of the technique, there are so many directions you can take it.

You could experiment with different textures within the same braid — mixing a solid fabric strip with a small-print cotton and a subtle stripe creates a rug that looks rich and layered without being overwhelming. This kind of mixed-fabric approach is very true to how historical braided rugs were actually made, since they were often constructed from whatever scraps were available rather than matching fabric purchased specifically for the purpose.

You could try a more complex color sequence within the braid, alternating your three strips in a pattern that creates a visual spiral effect as the rug is coiled. This requires a little more planning upfront but produces a finished rug that looks incredibly intricate and polished.

You could also make a matching set — a larger rug for the doll’s bedroom floor and a smaller oval for a bathroom or kitchen display. Having two rugs made from the same fabric palette but in different sizes adds so much cohesion to a doll’s room setup.

If you want to lean even further into the historical accuracy for Kirsten’s display, consider using wool fabric or wool felt, which would be closest to the actual materials a pioneer family would have used. Wool braided rugs are wonderfully sturdy and have a beautiful, slightly nubby texture that reads as authentically antique even in miniature.

Displaying Your Finished Rug

Once your braided rug is complete, the fun part is styling the scene around it. For Kirsten, imagine placing the rug in front of a small log cabin backdrop or beside her bed, perhaps with her little wooden chest nearby and a candle in a holder on the windowsill. The warm tones of a Kirsten-appropriate rug will make the whole scene feel like a cozy winter evening on the frontier.

For Addy, picture the rug in her Philadelphia bedroom — a symbol of the home she and her mother are building together in freedom. Addy’s books are full of the warmth and determination that she brings to creating a real life for herself, and a hand-crafted rug sitting in her room carries all of that meaning in a way that a store-bought accessory simply cannot.

You could also photograph your finished rug alongside your doll and share it online — I always love seeing what others create, and the American Girl crafting community is one of the warmest, most enthusiastic groups of people you will find anywhere on the internet.

A Note on Making This Project with Kids

This is a wonderful project to do with children, with a few small adaptations depending on age. The braiding step is very accessible for kids who already know how to braid hair, typically around age six or seven and up. The stitching step requires a little more fine motor control and patience, so younger kids might be happiest doing the braiding while an adult handles the coiling and stitching.

There is something deeply satisfying about giving a child a pile of colorful fabric strips and watching them produce a finished object through their own effort. The braided rug project has a very fast feedback loop — within an hour or two, you have something you can hold in your hands and put in a doll’s room, and that tangible result is incredibly motivating for young crafters.

This project also opens up a natural conversation about history. Why did people make rugs from scraps? What did it mean to reuse and repair rather than simply throw away and replace? Both Kirsten’s story and Addy’s story offer rich context for talking with kids about resourcefulness, resilience, and the meaning behind everyday objects.

Coming Up on Day 8

I hope you’ve loved this braided rug project as much as I have. It is one of those crafts that feels genuinely connected to history and to the stories of these characters in a way that makes the finished object feel like more than just a doll accessory. It feels like a little piece of a life.

Stay tuned for Day 8, where we’ll be moving on to another wonderful project in this Addy and Kirsten crafting series. If you haven’t already, make sure you’re following along so you don’t miss a single post — we’ve got so many good things still to come.

And if you make a braided rug from these instructions, I would absolutely love to see it. Leave a comment below or share a photo and tag me. Happy crafting, friends.