1970s puzzle rug

Tarquin: "Mummy, look, the dog lent me his craft knife and we cut this square out of the rug!"
Mummy: "How creative, darling! I knew it was worth sending you to that Montessori school."

Actually, no. This is a 1970s latch hook Puzzle Rug made out of identical motif squares, which you can arrange and re-arrange to your heart's content before committing to sewing them together to make one big eye-spinning geometric floor-covering.

Home Handicrafts by Mary Harding offers plenty of different pattern ideas to get you started:


The book suggests that you can unpick the squares and sew up again into a different pattern, or a different shape entirely - you could make a runner for a hall, two squares wide and eight squares long, or a smaller hearth rug of three by five squares. Groovy.