I am so enjoying this next batch of rugs! Getting over my newbie fears and really enjoying experimenting and learning on line from the tons of talented weavers out there. This particular rug I wove in an artsy thick yarn with the rag strips. The pictures don’t quite do it justice, you can see the little bits of fuzzy yarn peeking out through the nice earthy tones of this fabric. It turned out fantastic!
My stash of to-be rugs keeps growing! I need to weave faster! It’s really cool to go to thrift stores and garage sales and find nice vintage sheets and other nice fabrics that no one wants and convert them into beautiful floor rugs! It’s like a recycling green craft! And I love that it’s an old old craft…
Many of the fabrics have a thick border seam, an edge that I clip off. I did one with it but didn’t like the lumpy part that leaving the seams on, left. I use these strips to put between the rugs on the loom, as I weave. Once the rugs are cut off, I save these strips to use over and over. I suppose you could make a fun crazy rug with all the strips! Perhaps someday! In the meanwhile, I just love my strip basket and all it’s delightful colors and patterns!
The take up reel is getting fatter and fatter! Each rug I weave goes on this reel underneath the loom. Eventually it would get so large that I think it would interfere with your weaving! Some folks cut off rugs as they make each one, but I think that would be a huge waste of the somewhat expensive warp strings. It’s about $3 to $4 a cone and you need 24 cones to set up the loom! That is a bit of an investment! Depending on the length and the width of your rugs, you can see about 20 rugs or so from those 24 cones… After this run of warp, I’m going to use up my last white warp on a different style of warping… with two strings in the reed with one space skipped. It allows a little more of the fabric coloring and pattern to show through. I’m excited to try that next!
And when I am totally out of warp, I’m going to order black for my next series of rugs… to see how that works out. I’ve seen some with the black warp and it’s just really stunning. Especially with dark fabrics. Stay tuned! More cool weaving to come!
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