Rag Rugs, Part 2

As you saw in yesterday’s post, the “warm” and “cool” warps blend into the background pretty easily, letting the rags shine.

Before class, my Aunt Suzie and I had been going through my mom’s quilting room, and I selected mostly her fabrics to wash and bring with me to The Mannings. From the wide variety of fabrics that I took with me, Tom helped me pick five to rip for weft, then I wove one rug on each “flavor” of warp. The first rug started with these strips:


I had more of the purple and less of the blue, so I counted strips, did a little math, and figured out how to stagger the blue among the purple. And this is what I wound up with:


Even as the warp stripes change, the fabric is still the star in this rug.


Despite the new technique, I think I did a decent job on my selvedges. They are pretty even!


I was really pleased with the final result


The second set of strips was a yellow batik, an orange batik, and a really large cut of a batik that looked like a bruise in various stages of healing. I picked that hunk of fabric for this class because I couldn’t imagine ever wanting to sew with it.


I basically had the same number of strips for each of the three fabrics. The bruise fabric was significantly longer than the orange and yellow, but I joined the three together to form one “super-strip,” divided that pile in half, threw the extra yellow in the center, and reversed order for the second half of the rug.


Yeah, I know you can’t really tell in the picture. But that’s what I did! I swear!


Again, my selvedges were pretty good. You can se some of the lumps where I joined strips, but I’m fine with it. I may join strips with my sewing machine in the future, but the fold technique we learned in class works just fine for something that will be walked on regularly.

It seemed like the warm warp/bruise fabric rug was significantly shorter than the cool/purple rug, but that wasn’t really the case at the end of the day.


Although the difference is a bit more obvious when one end is aligned.


All in all, I really love both rugs and have a good idea where each one will live. I think. We’ll see.


Regardless, this class was awesome. Another purely perfect Mannings experience!!!