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!!!

Rag Rugs, Part 1

One of the big things I learned in 2012 is to never mess around about signing up for classes at The Mannings, one of my favorite places on earth. I didn’t jump when the first half of the year’s classes were posted, so when I they posted classes for the second half of the year, I jumped.

I signed up for “Beginning Rag Rugs,” a class taking place on the last two days of October. As I was getting my act together to leave town on Monday, October 29, Carol called from The Mannings to tell me that the forecast for Hurricane Sandy in their area was scary. They’d try to reschedule later in the week, but for now, class wasn’t happening.


Fortunately, Sandy took it easy on East Berlin, Pa., and its surrounding areas, so I headed east on Halloween to start my class on November 1. This class provides pre-warped looms, and is set for six students. Three looms had a “warm” warp.


And three looms had a “cool” warp.


I was indecisive, and fortunate that I had a classmate who was also interested in trying both warps, so Janet and I swapped looms after we finished our first rug. Janet brought thrift-store sheets for her rugs, and because she did not like the small lump caused by the suggested joining method and had some very short strips, she chose to make very small rugs.

Her first one was on the “warm” warp.



And her second rug was on the “cool” warp.


I don’t remember where/how she was planning to use her rugs. That’s a casualty of not blogging until nearly two months after the class. Oops.

Meanwhile, Joyce had essentially two full bolts of very similar brown leaf-print batik, and she was able to weave two long rugs on her warm-warp loom.




Sondra had some really cool coverlet remnants that she had dyed with natural dyes in her home studio (which sounds REALLY cool and includes several family heirloom large rug looms!)


It was an unusual weft and a bit of a challenge to work with, but she wound up with a really awesome rug with all kinds of texture.


And then, there was Judith. A truly lovely person who retired to the area just so she could be closer to The Mannings! How cool is that?!?!?!!! She came in with a bolt of purple batik and a bolt of fuschia batik and came up with some awesome rugs on her cool-warped loom.






I helped her tear some of her strips. Fun!






This post is already ginormous, so I’ll show you my two rugs tomorrow!