Progging: the story so far

Years and years ago, I went to Sunderland Museum with my mam. They had a rag rug exhibition, where members of the public could contribute to making a huge proggy mat. We both enjoyed doing this, but we didn’t follow up on it.

A few years ago, I saw that Beamish Museum was doing a proggy mat course. I went with my mam to the course, and we were taught how to make a proggy mat from beginning to end. I eventually finished the proggy mat and looked for a new proggy project.

Shopping at Tesco, I noticed their shopping bags were made of hessian. I had an idea: why not prog one of their shopping bags? I had a bag with a line of ladybirds trailing across the bag. I took the pattern of a ladybird and enlarged it. I hooked an outline and the legs using an old black t-shirt. I didn’t have any red fabric, so I looked in a charity shop, and found lots of fuzzy red cotton for the body. I used more of the black t-shirt for the spots. It didn’t come out exactly as planned, but I’ve had a lot of compliments about it — including from several Tesco checkout staff.

My next project is a mat to be made from pairs of old jeans.