Fig. 77
A lamp mat will be a welcome gift to mamma or even to your big brother for his room at college. The simplest one to make is of braided raffia. Take six pieces of raffia and tie them together at one end. Fasten this end to a nail or chair back, at a convenient height. If the raffia is dampened a little it will work more smoothly. Now braid it into a three-stranded plait, using two pieces for each strand. When a new piece is needed lay it above the end of the old one and continue. The ends are cut close after the braid is finished. You will need a great deal of this braided raffia—about ten yards of the natural colour and two or three of the coloured—but do a little at a time and you will find it pleasant work. When you have enough prepared, thread a No. 19 tapestry needle with a split strand of raffia and bind the end of it tightly around the end of the natural-coloured braid, taking a stitch or two through it to secure the binding. Now cut off the knot (which tied all six pieces together in starting) close to the binding and coil the braid into a tiny round centre. Run the needle through this centre back and forth, then start coiling the second row, bringing the long end of the braid around with its edge under the outer edge of the centre. The needle is run in slanting from right to left (see Fig. 77), then out from right to left, so that the stitches form a V within the coil. The whole mat is coiled and sewed in this way, except that when the last row of natural-coloured braid is stitched on, the end is bound as it was at the beginning and brought gradually in under the mat, where it is sewed securely. Be sure that you have finished a row before you end it off. This you can tell by counting the rows, from the centre out, on all sides of the mat. An end of the coloured braid (which is to form the border of the mat) is also bound with a split strand of coloured raffia and sewed against the under side of the mat. It is then sewed around like the rest of the mat, except that in the first row you will have to take great care to run the stitches through the natural-coloured braid so that they will not show. Be sure to finish the border at the part of the mat where it was started.
Sewed Raffia Lamp Mat
| Materials Required: | 12 or 14 yards of cotton clothesline or |
| window cord, | |
| A bunch of raffia, | |
| A bunch of coloured raffia, | |
| A No. 19 tapestry needle. |
A soft, thick lamp mat that is beautiful to look at and very useful is quite simply made as follows:
Fig. 78
Buy twelve or fourteen yards of cotton clothesline. It is white and smooth, and twisted like the fibre clothesline. Or there is a soft cotton window cord that is even better, because it is smoother. Thread a No. 19 tapestry needle with a strand of raffia, putting the thick, or root, end through the needle. Lay the other end of the raffia on the rope, with its tip turning toward the long end. Starting at the very end of the rope, wind the long end of raffia around it (and its own short end) for an inch or more. Then coil it into the smallest ring you possibly can, bring the long end of the raffia around, up through the centre of the ring and around again, taking in two coils—the one of which the ring was made and a second one made by bringing the long end of the rope around the ring (see Fig. 78). The first and second coils are covered in this way with a simple over-and-over stitch, which binds them together, passing around both and up through the centre. With the third coil the real stitch begins. It is an Indian one called the Figure Eight Stitch. The needle passes under the third coil (that is, the long end of rope which you are coiling around), around, over it, under the coil below, around, over it and up again, under and around the third coil—drawing the coils close together. The whole mat is sewed in this way. If you choose, you can work a design of coloured rings as a border or a solid border of the coloured raffia. Fig. 79 shows how the new pieces of raffia are added. Cross the old and new ends on the rope, bring the needle threaded with the new strand under the lower coil, out in front, over the lower coil, under and around the upper one, and so on.