ORONO – After reading a Bangor Daily News article about rug-braiding, Ruth Reed of Orono called to say that she’s still walking on the braided rug her mother, Pearl McBride of Easton, began making in 1942 when Reed was a student at Farmington Normal School. Her mother finished the rug in 1948 or 1949.

“It looks good,” Reed said of her heirloom rug. “It’s not all wool, though, because my mother cut up my father’s long cotton underwear [to use as rug material].”

The rug is 9 feet by 12 feet and the predominant colors are green and maroon. Her mother often dyed recycled fabric to get the colors she wanted.

In those days, Reed said, people saved old clothing to use in braided rugs.

When she was a young woman, Reed wore a green wool coat trimmed with faux leopard fur when she visited an aunt. “She took one look at my coat and said, ‘I want that for my braided rug,'” Reed recalled. “Winters in the County were long so people had time to make rugs.”

Reed’s mother taught her to braid rugs, but Reed preferred to knit, embroider, tat or crochet.

– Ardeana Hamlin