Feline approved

What you don't see in the picture is what they were doing just a few seconds before this photo was snapped. The camera never seems to be available when you need it, huh? Just seconds before they were acting as if the brown rug had catnip woven into it! They were rolling and stretching and rubbing their faces all over the nubby brown texture.

These are two more rugs for Christmas presents. I feel fairly safe posting these as the recipients are too little to be reading blogs. LOL

Recycle Weaving

A few months ago I was cleaning out closets with the intent to donate to Goodwill. A lot did go to Goodwill but some of the t-shirts and jeans were not Goodwill quality (rips, stains, spilled paint, etc) so I set them aside. I knew I could use them to make throw rugs. Around the same time I was creating my dye samples. I put aside the leftover dye for an upcoming guild dye day. When that day came, I grabbed a bunch of t-shirts and put the leftover dye to good use.



The beauty of this was the lack of precision. A drip here, a dribble there, a splash of this color, a squeeze of that color. I used up all of the excess dyes. The above photo shows all of the dyed t-shirts stacked up ready to go home. I forgot to get in-process photos. Oops. Took them home, tossed them in the washer and dryer and they're ready to be prepared for weaving.

I cut off the sleeves and the bottom hem. Then I cut the shirts into strips parallel to the bottom hem. I cut these strips 2" wide. You get some pretty long strips until you get to the chest section where the sleeves were but even those strips are useable. When I joined the strips to make my weft, I alternated a long and short strip so that the knots were fairly evenly spaced apart.

For the jeans, I used the fabric from the legs. I could have saved the pockets and waistbands for another project but really, I have enough stuff in my house and need to start purging. Jeans are always getting worn out so if I ever do desire to make a project using jean pockets, I'll just start saving then. The jean fabric, because it's considerably thicker, was cut at 1" widths.

For the warp, I used a Pepto Bismal pink 8/4 carpet warp. It coordinates perfectly with the t-shirts and even looks nice on the jean side. The design is reversible by using a double-weave technique. I made some other rugs last year and really like how thick they come out. This rug is coming out even thicker - must be the jeans. It's going to be so cushy under tiny tootsies. This one is a gift for one of my nieces.

Two-sided Rag Rug

Progress on the rag rug found in the November/December 2007 Handweaving Magazine is slow-going. I think winding pirns is so much faster than cutting fabric strips, tapering the ends, and winding onto ski shuttles. And the weaving itself is also slower. I'm under the impression that the strips shouldn't have a twist in them as they lie in the shed. However today, I'm going to experiment with not worrying about it and seeing if it makes a significant difference in the finished weaving. If not, maybe ignoring twists will help speed up the process.

I do like this results of this project. Reversible things always appeal to me. Although in this case, the rug is going to be given to some friends of ours as a thank you gift.

Thrums

There's always warp waste in weaving. The only way to use nearly 100% is to use a dummy warp for tieing on to the warping beam. In September, I wove a shawl using a painted warp and solid-color rayon for weft. It came out beautiful largely in part to the painted warp. So when I had to cut off the ends of the beautiful painted warp, I simply had to save them.

Today after seeing an innovative idea of rug weaving, I tied them together end to end, wound it on a bobbin, and started weaving.



I've used three components in this fabric: the thrums, medium brown rayon yarn, and half-inch strips of fabric. Each component gets a few shuttle passes and then I move to the next one.

What will I do with the fabric? I don't know. It hasn't told me yet.