BAY TREE, Alta. – It was like Christmas in May at the Sadlier house.
Neighbors had just dropped off a dozen large boxes of clothes that didn’t sell at a recent garage sale. The girls dug through the clothes and shrieked with laughter as they tried on goofy hats, questionable fashion outfits, old graduation dresses and woolly mittens.
During breaks in the outdoor fashion show, they sorted clothes that would be suitable for their farm-based rag rug business. An old striped shirt cut lengthways would create an interesting pattern in the rug. Old bluejeans with holes in the knees and faded corduroy pants could be transformed into practical floor rugs or place mats.
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It’s not unusual for friends and neighbors to drop off boxes of old clothes for the family of 18 in the farming community near the British Columbia border in Alberta’s Peace River district.
Jim and Kathi Sadlier have six girls and 10 boys from six to 35. While there are only five children at home now, the clothes are passed onto the children and grandchildren or recycled into rugs.
Work on their new business began the moment Kathi ordered a specially made loom from neighbor David Donaldson after receiving an inheritance.
“As soon as we ordered we literally started tearing clothes apart. The living room was wall-to-wall clothes.”
The family cut strips of cloth, sewed the pieces together and rolled them into balls for weaving.
Kathi thought it would only be a few weeks before her loom arrived, but it was actually two years before the loom took its place in the family living room.
“It’s a conversation piece,” said Kathi, who has sold rugs to visitors who have stopped by and commented on the loom. They usually end up in the basement storage room to view the hundreds of woven rugs.
Serious business
Kathi aims to tie the ends of at least one rug a day before breakfast. The hobby has turned into a source of farm income.
The family has woven hundreds of rugs, place mats and hot pads on the loom since they bought it in 1994.
Weaving is a family business. Kathi’s oldest daughter, Tammy, is a partner in the loom and the other five daughters take turns cutting the material, tying the rug ends, threading the loom or weaving the rugs.
“I can’t get the clothes ready and do the weaving by myself,” said Kathi, who pays the girls based on the number of rugs woven.
“It keeps us out of mischief.”
The rugs are sold at a farmers’ market in nearby Dawson Creek, B.C.
Kathi sells a 28 x 48-inch rug for about $37.
“When you consider the work that went into it and the years of wear, it’s pretty reasonable.”
While the initial idea for the loom was Kathi’s, the daughters have taken over most of the rug construction and Kathi washes and grades eggs from the farm’s 400 chickens.
She sells more than 100 dozen eggs at the farmers’ market each week. Extra eggs are turned into noodles and also sold at the market.
“It’s extra income,” said Kathi, who is allergic to the 200 beef cows on their farm.
She can no longer look at a piece of material without thinking what it would look like in a rug. She even eyed a fur coat that came in the garage sale boxes as a potential rug prospect until her daughters reminded her they couldn’t throw a fur coat into the washing machine.
“That’s why these are so nice. You can throw them right into the washer and dryer. They’re very durable and they last forever,” she said.
“I really enjoy it, I just wish I had more time to do it.”
Not only does Kathi enjoy meeting people who buy the rugs, she also believes it’s a good way to recycle old clothes that would end up in the landfill site.
Recently a nurse asked that her old colorful uniforms be recycled into rugs. Another family gave Kathi their mother’s old clothes. She had just died, and her children asked they be woven into place mats for the family.
“It’s really interesting. It really is.”
