Day 7 – Braided Rug: Crafting with Addy and Kirsten

There is something quietly magical about sitting down with a pile of fabric strips and watching them slowly transform into something beautiful, useful, and full of heart. If you have been following along with this craft series, you already know that each day brings a new project inspired by the beloved American Girl characters Addy Walker and Kirsten Larson. Today is Day 7, and we are making a braided rug — one of the most historically rich, satisfying, and genuinely accessible crafts you can take on with kids.

Whether you are a parent looking for a weekend activity, a homeschool educator building a living history lesson, or an American Girl collector who loves bringing the world of these dolls to life, this project is for you. By the end of this post, you will know everything you need to make a beautiful braided rug, understand why this craft connects so deeply to Addy and Kirsten’s stories, and feel inspired to sit down and start braiding today.

Why a Braided Rug? The History Behind the Craft

Before we pick up a single strip of fabric, it is worth pausing to appreciate what a braided rug actually represents. These rugs have been made in America for centuries, and their history is woven — quite literally — into the lives of everyday people who needed warmth, color, and comfort underfoot but had very little money to spare.

Braided rugs were born out of necessity and ingenuity. Families saved every scrap of worn-out clothing, every remnant of old wool blankets, every piece of fabric that was too small to be useful for anything else. Those scraps were cut into long strips, braided together, and coiled into rugs that could last for decades. Nothing was wasted. Everything had value.

This is where Kirsten Larson enters the picture so naturally. Kirsten, who immigrated from Sweden to Minnesota in 1854, lived in a world where resourcefulness was not a lifestyle choice but a survival skill. Her family’s frontier home would have been furnished with handmade items at every turn. A braided rug on the floor of a pioneer cabin would have been one of the few splashes of color in a spare, hard-working household. Making one was a family affair — something mothers, daughters, and even sons participated in during long winter evenings by firelight.

Addy Walker’s connection to this craft is equally powerful, though it comes from a different angle. Addy’s story takes place in 1864, during the Civil War, and her family’s journey from enslavement in North Carolina to freedom in Philadelphia is at the heart of everything she does. Braided and coiled rugs were made throughout African American communities both before and after Emancipation. The ability to create beauty and comfort from almost nothing — to take discarded materials and make something lasting — is a thread that runs through the resilience and creativity of Black American domestic life in the nineteenth century. When Addy and her mother finally had a home of their own in Philadelphia, filling it with handmade items would have carried enormous emotional significance. Every craft, every stitch, every coiled rug would have been a declaration: we are here, we are free, and we are making this home ours.

Making a braided rug today connects us to both of these stories. It is a hands-on history lesson that does not feel like homework. It feels like creating something real.

What You Will Need

One of the best things about this project is that you probably already have most of what you need. The supply list is short and very forgiving.

For a doll-sized braided rug (the perfect size for an American Girl display or bedroom), you will need fabric strips cut from cotton or wool scraps. Old T-shirts work wonderfully because they are soft, plentiful, and do not fray. You can also use strips cut from old pillowcases, worn flannel shirts, or cotton quilting fabric. Aim for strips that are roughly one inch wide and as long as possible — you can tie shorter strips together to make longer ones, and the knots will be hidden inside the braid.

You will also need scissors, a tapestry needle with a large eye, and strong thread or waxed linen cord for sewing the coils together. Some crafters use a dull-tipped upholstery needle because it is easier to push through the dense layers of braid. A safety pin is helpful for anchoring the top of your braid to a cushion or a piece of foam board while you work, keeping the tension even.

For a child-sized or full human-sized rug, the same materials apply — you just need a lot more of them. A rug that measures roughly two feet by three feet will require somewhere between a pound and a half and two pounds of fabric strips, so start collecting scraps well in advance or consider visiting a thrift store to buy inexpensive fabric by the yard.

Choose your colors intentionally. If you are making a Kirsten-inspired rug, think about the muted, earthy tones of the Swedish-American frontier: deep blues, dusty reds, warm grays, and creamy whites. Kirsten’s world was not drab, but it was practical, and the colors people used reflected the natural dyes available to them — indigo, madder root, walnut husks, and goldenrod. If you are channeling Addy, consider the warm golds, deep greens, and rich burgundies that appear in African American quilting traditions of the era. These colors feel alive and expressive, full of the joy that Addy’s family would have found in creating beauty on their own terms.

Preparing Your Fabric

Cut or tear your fabric into strips. Tearing is actually faster and often gives you cleaner edges on woven cotton — just make a small snip at the edge of the fabric and then pull firmly along the grain. For knit fabric like T-shirts, scissors work better because knits do not tear evenly along a straight line.

Aim for consistent width. One inch is a good standard for a doll-sized rug, and an inch and a half to two inches works well for a larger project. Inconsistency is fine — it adds character — but very dramatic variations can make the braid lumpy and uneven.

Once your strips are cut, sort them by color into piles. You will be braiding three strips at a time, so think about your color combinations. A classic approach is to repeat a pattern — blue, red, cream, blue, red, cream — so the braid has a regular rhythm. Another approach is to work more freely, transitioning through colors gradually so the rug shifts from cool tones at one end to warm tones at the other. There is no wrong answer here. This is your rug, and it should reflect your own sense of beauty.

How to Braid

If you have ever braided hair, you already know how to braid fabric strips. The technique is identical.

Take three strips and tie or pin them together at one end. Secure that end to something stable — a safety pin clipped to a pillow works perfectly. Now begin braiding: bring the left strip over the middle strip, then bring the right strip over the new middle strip, and repeat. Keep your tension even and your braid flat rather than twisted. A flat, even braid is what will allow your rug to lie smooth on the floor rather than bunching up in the middle.

When one strip runs out, add a new one by overlapping the end of the old strip with the beginning of the new one and folding them together into the braid. The overlap will be secured by the surrounding braid and will not slip loose. If you are using T-shirt strips, you can also tie them together with a small knot and tuck the knot tail to the back side of the braid as you go.

Keep braiding until you have a length of braid that you are happy with. For a small oval doll rug, you might want six to eight feet of finished braid. For a larger rug, you will need significantly more — a two-by-three-foot oval rug typically requires somewhere around forty to fifty feet of braid. This sounds like a lot, but braiding goes faster than you expect once you get into a rhythm, and it is a perfect activity to do while listening to an audiobook, watching a movie, or sitting with a child who is reading aloud.

Coiling and Sewing Your Rug

Once you have a length of braid ready, you can begin shaping your rug. Most braided rugs are oval, though round rugs are equally traditional and a little easier to start.

For an oval rug, begin with a straight length of braid at the center — this starting length determines how long your finished rug will be. A center length of about four inches will give you a rug that is roughly eight inches long when finished. A center length of twelve inches will produce a rug closer to two feet long. Coil the braid around this center section, keeping it flat and tight, and begin sewing the coils together with your tapestry needle and thread. Push the needle through the edge loops of adjacent braid rows and pull firmly — you want the rug to be solid and resistant to shifting.

For a round rug, simply coil the braid from the very beginning, starting with a tight circle at the center and spiraling outward. The sewing technique is the same.

Work slowly and check frequently that your rug is lying flat on a table. If it starts to cup upward or buckle in the middle, your coils are too tight. Add a little slack to let the rug relax. If it ruffles at the edges, your coils are too loose. Both problems are easy to fix by adjusting your tension as you sew.

When you have coiled and sewn all of your braid, taper the final end by trimming the strips gradually shorter so the braid tapers to a point rather than ending abruptly. Fold the tapered end under the last coil and sew it down securely, weaving in any loose ends.

Making It a Doll-Sized Project with Kids

If you are doing this project with younger children, scaling down to a doll-sized rug makes the whole experience more manageable and rewarding. A small oval rug for an American Girl doll takes about twenty to thirty minutes of braiding and another fifteen minutes to coil and sew, making it very achievable in a single afternoon.

Let children choose the colors. This is genuinely one of the best parts of the project because it opens up a natural conversation about Addy and Kirsten and what their homes might have looked like. Ask your child what colors they think Kirsten might have chosen for her log cabin. Would she have used fabric from an old dress? Would the rug have matched the curtains her mother sewed? What about Addy — after Addy and her mother found their boarding house in Philadelphia and began building their new life, what kind of colors would have made them feel at home?

These questions do not have definitive answers, and that is exactly the point. They invite children to use their imaginations and their empathy together, to step into lives very different from their own and think carefully about what those lives felt like from the inside.

Once the rug is finished, place it in your American Girl doll’s room or display. Seeing a handmade object in that small space — something your child made with their own hands, connected to a story they love — creates a sense of pride and ownership that is difficult to replicate with store-bought accessories.

Extending the Learning

A braided rug project pairs beautifully with a broader exploration of nineteenth-century American domestic life. If you are homeschooling or supplementing classroom learning, consider building a few days of activities around the themes this craft raises.

You might read excerpts from primary sources about immigrant life on the Minnesota frontier, looking at what Swedish settlers actually brought with them from the Old Country and how quickly they adapted to materials available in America. The Minnesota Historical Society has wonderful resources on this topic, including photographs of period homes and household objects.

For Addy’s story, the history of freedpeople building independent lives in Northern cities after Emancipation is rich and largely undertaught. Exploring how African American families in Philadelphia in the 1860s created homes, communities, churches, and schools from almost nothing is genuinely moving and directly relevant to Addy’s experience. The Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, which Addy’s family attends in the books, is a real place with a real history that children can learn about and, if they live near Philadelphia, even visit.

You might also explore the broader tradition of rag rugs in American folk art. Museum collections at places like the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum and various folk art museums across the country include examples of braided, hooked, and woven rugs from the nineteenth century. Looking at photographs of these objects — seeing the actual colors, the wear patterns, the way a particular rug bears evidence of the hands that made it — brings the craft alive in a way that no textbook description quite can.

Tips for Getting a Beautiful Finished Rug

A few practical notes to help you get the best possible result from your project.

Wash your finished rug before displaying or using it. A quick run through the washing machine on a gentle cycle will help the fabric strips settle and give the rug a softer, more finished feel. Lay it flat to dry so it keeps its shape.

If you want your rug to lie very flat and crisp, press it lightly with a steam iron while it is still slightly damp. This is especially helpful for wool rugs.

Store extra braided strips loosely coiled rather than tightly folded so they do not develop sharp creases. If you are working on a large project over several days or weeks, keeping your work-in-progress in a large basket is both practical and charming — it looks exactly the way this kind of work would have looked in a nineteenth-century home.

Do not worry about perfection. Braided rugs are folk art, and the slight irregularities that come from handwork are part of what makes them beautiful. A machine-perfect rug is a different object entirely from one that carries the evidence of human hands. Embrace the wobbles.

A Reflection on Making Things by Hand

There is a reason crafts like this one have persisted for centuries while so many other domestic skills have faded. Braiding is rhythmic and meditative. It requires just enough focus to quiet a busy mind without demanding so much concentration that it becomes stressful. Many people find that they do their best thinking while doing simple, repetitive handwork — braiding, knitting, weaving, hand-sewing. There is a long tradition of this, from spinning rooms in colonial America to quilting bees on the frontier to community sewing circles in urban neighborhoods throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These were not just craft sessions. They were spaces for conversation, for storytelling, for the passing of knowledge from one generation to the next.

When we sit down to braid with our children today, we are stepping — however briefly and imperfectly — into that same tradition. We are making something with our hands. We are talking while we work. We are connecting a small practical object to a larger story about who people were, how they lived, and what they cared about.

Addy cared about home. Kirsten cared about home. And so, in all likelihood, do you.

What’s Next in the Series

We are seven days in, and this craft series is just hitting its stride. Coming up in the days ahead, we will be exploring more projects inspired by the rich world of American Girl history — from simple sewing projects to paper crafts to cooking activities grounded in period-accurate recipes. Each project is designed to be accessible, historically meaningful, and genuinely enjoyable to do with kids of a range of ages.

If you made a braided rug today, I would love to see it. Share your photos in the comments or tag this blog in your social media posts. There is something wonderful about seeing all the different color combinations people choose and all the different scales at which people take on this project — doll-sized, child-sized, table-runner-sized, full floor-rug-sized. Every one of them is a small act of connection to something much bigger.

See you on Day 8.