Rag rugs made from worn-out sheets and bits of cloth may seem like relics from a bygone era, but they hold valuable modern-day lessons for art students at the U of A’s Augustana Campus. Credit: Sydney Tancowny

Rag rugs, the kind Grandma used to make from worn-out sheets and bits of cloth, may seem like relics from a bygone era, but they hold valuable modern-day lessons.

Woven into the curriculum of a modern art course at the University of Alberta’s Augustana Campus this winter, the act of crafting the humble household article has plenty to teach students—and anyone else who cares about sustainability, says instructor Andrea Korda, art history professor and associate dean of research at Augustana.

"The idea of working with your hands, making things yourself, is like an antidote to industrialization, commercialization, alienation—the things we continue to lament and be concerned about."

As co-author of a recent paper on the value of crafting as a teaching method, Korda worked the hands-on activity into her class as a way for students to reflect on the mass production of textiles during the Victorian era in the 19th century, at the height of Britain’s Industrial Revolution. The findings are published in the journal History.

Students in a modern art course at Augustana Campus craft rag rugs to learn about textile production and sustainability. Credit: Andrea Korda

As part of the course, students learn about the high costs of that technology, as machinery began to displace human labor, resulting in lower wages, poor working conditions and inferior goods. They also study societal responses like the British Arts and Crafts movement, which championed the value of handcrafted workmanship.

Crafting their own rugs gives students a tangible way to think about that historical shift and contemporary issues with textile waste, fast fashion and related environmental costs, Korda says.

"They can think about how their own experiences connect to these bigger ideas, because when we talk about the history of the textile industry, we’re all implicated in it—we all wear clothes.

"I want them to know that people have been talking about these issues for more than a hundred years, and that this is an ongoing problem. We are not the first to be grappling with it, and there have always been critical responses to it."

A recent resurgence among young people of "grandma hobbies" like knitting, other types of traditional crafting, and even thrifting and mending clothing may reflect "their consciousness about waste and their concerns about the hyper-production and commodification of everything," she adds.

"I think they want to go back to a time when you didn’t throw things out, you held onto them and found ways to reuse them. They want to make things themselves."

Korda and fellow researchers also created Crafting Communities, a website about Victorian material culture and its legacies. Along with lesson plans aimed at teachers, the site offers do-it-yourself projects, a podcast and other information about crafting during that era as a way to "bring together the past and the present," she says.

"It can help people understand that they are part of the bigger narrative, that while they are crafting something, they’re also learning about history and how they relate to it."

More information

Andrea Kordaet al, Ragged Histories: Textiles, Craft and Creative History, History (2025). DOI: 10.1111/1468-229x.70038

Citation: Handmade learning: Students weave sustainability lessons into rag rugs (2026, January 14) retrieved 14 January 2026 from https://phys.org/news/2026-01-handmade-students-sustainability-lessons-rag.html

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