Maker Faire Lake County 2023
A Smalltown Baroness
Home: Illinois, United States
Looking for a colorful addition to your wall or floor? Something sturdy and hand-created? A Smalltown Baroness creates rugs and wall-hangings braided from thrifted fabric or other useful materials.
Maker
Hilary Crandall
A Smalltown Baroness creates rugs and wall hangings for colorful pops to homes. I create too many for my own home, and due to the cost of materials, need to sell them. I use thrifted fabric, linens and other items that would end up destroyed if I didn’t use it. Reportedly, 92 million tonnes of textiles waste is created each year, I do my part in this area to keep reuse and recycle vintage sheets, curtains and fabric that someone has gotten rid of. I braid my own rugs and wall hangings and reweave them into the item to make it stronger, more durable and well made. It takes 40 to 50 hours to create a rug or hanging about 32” wide and about that many yards to make it as well.
What Inspired You to Make This?
My mother discussed how they’d used to make these sorts of things after WW2 and I was interested. She said that one of the issues she’d had is that braiding it into rings caused it to fall apart. So, I wanted to improve on that. And at the time I started fabric wasn’t nearly as expensive as it is now. It takes about 40 to 50 yards of fabric to make a 36” rug and about that many hours as well.
