Clippy Mat Making in Yorkshire

Clippy mat - or "Rag-rug" making - is an age-old Yorkshire pass time and a great way to spend quality family time together with a production purpose - making a floor mat or rug to keep the cold out of traditional Yorkshire homes.

Applying the Finishing Touches to a Traditional Yorkshire Clippy Mat.

For many year's before people in Yorkshire could afford  carpets or wall-hangings, clippy-mats were home-made and decorated the floors (and walls) of working class cottages across the North York Moors and beyond.

Making clippy-mats also provided familie with something to do on long dark winter evenings before the advent of TV and the internet.

Clippy mats are colourful and easy and cheap to make; requiring nothing more than a piece of Hessian cloth, some strips of unwanted cloth material, and a sharpened clothes peg.

More sophistacted clippy-mat makers today use a "bodger tool" which makes the job even easier and quicker.

A clippy-mat making workshop was recently held in the Rosedale Reading Room; and this gave our family the chance to introduce our young daughters (aged 8 and 10) to the art of clippy-mat making.

A Colourful Yorkshire Rose Motif is Finished in Under 3-Hours.

Picking a Yorkshire Rose motif for the clippy-mat, the girls had the whole rug finished in under three hours and it now has pride of place in front of the kitchen sink in Rosella Holiday Cottage in Rosedale Abbey.

You'll get to see it and appreciate the warmth it provides when next visiting the cottage!