Thursday, October 13, 2011

Many, Many Mug Rugs

This has been a project that has spanned nearly all of 2011. The finished roll of fabric was hangin’ in the basement for months, waiting to be sewn and cut apart.

And let me just say that handweaving has made me fall in love with my serger all over again. I have used that machine sporadically since purchasing it on a really good deal years ago at Bearly Stitchin’ in Pasadena. I took Melinda’s fantastic class to learn how to use the damn thing. I busted it out to cut apart my two rep weave projects, and it worked like a champ.

Side note: I've never regretted that purchase. It's a handy little bugger and I'm glad I bought it. But weaving has really reinforced what a good purchase the serger was!

MR1.jpg

This was a “rep weave” kit offered by Yarn Barn of Kansas, a plan of attack perpetrated by the Warped Weavers group on Ravelry.

“Rep weave” refers to a style of weaving where the warp is sleyed so that it completely covers the weft. Sett is weaving’s equivalent to a knitter’s gauge, and your sett is determined by how many warp threads per inch are sleyed into the reed. Make sense?

Yeah, that’s OK.

So I measured the warp for this kit shortly after the new year.

MR2.jpg
Treadling pattern #1

I had it ready to weave by January 14. After reading some of the other weave-a-long posts, I decided that I didn’t want to hemstitch and fringe each mug rug. Instead, I chose to do hems.

MR3.jpg
Treadling Pattern #2

Totally made the right choice. Most of the mug rugs (I wound up with 14. Yes, 14. Yes, that’s a LOT of mug rugs.) are woven with the thick weft in the dark green and thin weft in the lavender. Some are done the other way around. You can see the difference if you look closely at the pictures of the three different treadling patterns.

MR4.jpg
Treadling Pattern #3

The learning curve for this particular project pretty much centered on dealing with the thick warp. There is a bit of a trick to starting/stopping the thick warp. Thankfully, I was able to figure out this technique before I tackled the other weave-a-long project for Warped Weavers. It made life easier.

MR5.jpg

Rep Weave Mug Rugs

Thread: Carpet Warp
Colors: Forest and Limestone
Quantity: 1 tube each
EPI: 32 (8-dent reed, 2 doubled ends per dent)
Finished Width: 5”
Mods: Folded hems in lieu of fringe/hemstitch. Mug rugs finished virtually square.

3 comments:

turtlegirl76 said...

Awesome! They look really cool. Your mugs will have rugs for years to come.

Sarah said...

These look awesome! I think I understand now how you must feel when I post something about spinning -- you're speaking a foreign language to me!

Jenn said...

Those are wonderful! My mother in law weaves, and I'm so intrigued by it, but I'm terrified about bringing something else into my house.