As Promised

I did finish the last rug project I posted about!  I procrastinated a bit towards the end for some reason, but yesterday I made myself go to the studio and finish the last 2 inches of hem, took it off of the loom and hemmed it straight away!  I knew that if I let myself I could easily do some more procrastinating!

This is of course the Hollywood warp pattern found in the "Rug Handbook" by Meaney.  I chose to cut wide loops from the t-shirts this time to make a thicker rug.

T-shirt loops are softer than sock loopers and the joins are not nearly as hard or numerous either.  I really had some fun putting the colors together.  Can you spot the "Big Orange" of the University of Tennessee?

Bertha the 60 inch Leclerc behaved beautifully on this 30 inch rug.  I have just enough warp left on the loom to rethread for a sample of an upcoming project.  One of my clients has requested a full width shag rug!  I think a small rug to get the feel of this weave structure and an estimate of just how many t-shirts will be needed is in order.










This summer, we will continue with our Tuesday blog posts about what is happening at the Center.  The personal posts that Carol, LouAnn and I do may be sporadic for various reasons.  If we have something to post about, you can be sure that we will!

As always, keep Weaving, Tina

Thick and Thicker

I posted a picture of rug that I was working on last week, I will repost the picture here so that you don't have to go looking for it.....

Having separated what I had prepared into 7 different bundles, I found that there was not enough in this first representative bundle to make a rug the size that I wanted to make.

I went stash diving and found several that were in tune with the theme of the rug, (teams and institutions frequented by the recipient) to beef up both the size of the rug I wanted to make but also the color palette as well.

I can't tell you how happy I am with this rug!  It is just so much more than I hoped for, and I hope that the recipient is pleased with it too.  I plan to finish this rug in short order and then, when I cut it off I intend to rethread for a different project altogether!  More on that next week hopefully!

(I posted about my bobbin lace project on The Farmstead Studio, which you can find in our blog list)

Until next week, Happy Weaving, Tina

Finally an Empty Loom!

Last week I had stopped weaving the 4th t-shirt rug because I wasn't sure I liked the color for the hem that I had chosen.

I pulled out several colors I had on hand and stepped back and took a picture.  I can somehow see color combinations more clearly in a picture, and it confirmed my new color choice.

I chose the last one on the right,  and while it doesn't match either the copper or the brown in the rug , it is somehow a combination of the two.  Once that choice was made I quickly wove the rest of this rug.

It is always fun to see the newest rug coming around to cover the last one.
















I could tell that I only had enough warp left to do one more rug, so I went across the hall and started pulling out colors.  I wanted use white as a contrast again, and I had fun choosing a new combination of colors.

I neglected to get a picture of this combination  in strips or on the loom, but I have one of the finished rug you will get to see further down.

I cut the rugs off and laid them out to rest before I cut them apart to hem.

Rug #1 was a striped pattern that I found in a swedish weaving book for rag rugs.   I liked it well enough but I feel that t-shirt weft doesn't look the same as regular rag weft, and I started thinking of a new way to combine my t-shirts.

Blues, Browns and Gray as the contrast color was my first combination.  I love how it looked on the loom, but I was surprised at the almost clasped weft effect that showed up once the rug was off the loom.

Then I decided to do some bright colors, red, turquoise, yellow, orange and black with white as the contrast.  Again, I really like the clasped weft effect.

Peacocks at the Museum were on my mind when I chose the colors for this rug, three browns and 2 blues.

For the 5th and final rug I went with white as the contrast color, then 2 blues, 2 reds, and a green.  I really wanted to use an orange in this one, but in the end the green won.

I have thoroughly enjoyed this warp in the Hollywood pattern in black / white and I plan to do another one very soon, though I think I will be looking for a wider loom, 28 inches is as wide as Carl Jr, (the small Cambridge rug loom) will do and I know that I would really like to use at least 30 inches in the future.

I will now turn my attention to the 8 harness loom that is ready to have it's warp threaded in the rose path pattern, more on that next week.

Until then, Happy Crafting, Tina

Black and White

Last week I had gotten as far as this on Carl Junior.  Between last week and this week, I  switched out the reed that was too big, and threaded the warp through the reed, but I was not happy with the sett, it made the warp too wide for the Jr.

I checked with Lou Ann about the proper sett for this pattern, and it was 12epi instead of the 10 I was using.  So once I resleyed at the proper sett it was a perfect fit!

This is the beginnings of the first rug.  I am using t shirts cut in strips.  I am using a frazer rag cutter to do the job.  The blue and white will be the dominant colors, so I am stripping those shirts as I go along, but I only need one shuttle full of the red, black and a green.














On a side note, we found a small swarm of bees on one of the small crabapple trees we planted this spring, it was really cool!  But before we could capture them they swarmed again and flew away.  That was really cool to watch, though I am a bit disappointed to not have a hive, I had even picked out the perfect place to put it!

I also found 2 dead moles in the house this week, whew something so small could make such a stench, it did not go unnoticed!

Back up in the Studio, it is time for one of the 100 yard warps to go on the 8 harness. (These warps are only 8 inches wide in the reed and for hand towels I have doubled one of the warps over on itself to make it 16 inches in the reed, so now 50yds.)  I had tried a weighted system  with this warp sometime last year, and I never could get the weights just right.  Either the weights were not enough, and the warp gave as I wove or they were too much and the whole loom groaned as I tried to advance the warp.


So I am back to conventional weaving on this loom.  I am using my trapeze to load the warp and I have 2 weights of 3lbs on it as well, I am going to try and see how much of this warp I can get on the warp beam, I will have to get some more wooden slats for that today.




When I had taken down the weighted warp last year, I rough tied a new warp onto the old warp and of course inserted lease sticks.   As I wound on, I came across the join, and spent a day tying the two together, I think it would have been quicker to start with the fresh warp from the beginning! ( I have several of these 100 yd warps in 12/3 cotton, in the  4 tubs you see below the trapeze.)

I wiggled the little knots through the rough sleyed reed that I use as a raddle, and I wiggled them through the lease sticks, with only 2 broken threads.

I am going to experiment with this warp, if I succeed in getting all 50 yards on the loom it is going to be a long standing project.   I am considering Monks cloth to start with.  I figure I can always rethread when I want to.  With 8 harnesses, I have a lot of design options.




So that was it for this last week, I am glad to be back to work in the Studio, but I am feeling cramped and scattered and I am slowly working on a Studio clean out and reorganization.  Stay tuned!

Until next time, Happy Crafting

Another Chance

On Tuesday Lou Ann took a picture of me with the baby Cambridge rug loom in the back of my car.  I had been looking for a 36 inch rug loom for a couple of weeks, ever since I started reading some of the blogs on our list that I had not been reading.  I've caught up now, and caught the  rug bug once again.

I used to have a couple of really good rug looms, but I got to the point where seven looms were just too much for me.  I gave them both away to good weaving homes where they are working happily.  One of the looms was a huge Cambridge rug loom that we had dubbed "Carl"  after our dear own Carl, because it used to belong to him,  I even took a rug warp off of that loom that has been hanging in my studio ever since.

 A couple of years ago the Tuesday weavers got a donation of a small loom that was the spitting image of a Cambridge, just pint sized.  We promptly named it Carl Jr. and  we used it at the Center for quite some time, but as sometimes happens it had been relegated, last summer to the annex when a loom more suited to our needs as a group came along.

I have  been looking around for a 36in 4 harness rug loom for several weeks now, and I actually found a full sized Cambridge rug loom at a local antique place, just down the road  from the Center in fact.  However that loom had been out in the weather for quite some time, it had a lot of rust and the cloth beam was warped.  I decided that it was not going to come to my house because it was bigger than I had room for  (all looms have to fit in one room!) and it was going to take more than my skill set to get it up and running.

That is how Carl Jr ended up at my house on Tuesday of this week.  I thought I would take the time to  clean up the wood a bit before I put the loom together, but I couldn't wait and I had to put it together. right away.  Within an hour of arriving home I had everything in place, but there I had to leave it until the next day.

(Isn't he cute!)  As I was putting him together, I found I was missing the board that goes under the warp beam in the back of the loom, so on Wednesday, when Lou Ann and I were done at the Museum of Appalachia, we went across the street to the Appalachian Arts Crafts Center where we weave every Tuesday from 10-2, and we looked once more in the annex to see if we could find that board I was missing.  We did not, but I did find the metal rod that will hold the warp to the warp beam, and I checked out a reed  and some extra heddles that I thought would fit the little loom! Yay!


That afternoon, I replaced most of the cordage on the loom with Texsolv cords, I love Texsolv for the fact that you can really get each set of  cords exactly the same length, so very important!  Then I tied on that same rug warp that I had taken off of the big Cambridge "Carl", set up the trapeze, and started winding on to the warp beam.  I was interrupted  part way through, so I had to finish up on Thursday afternoon.

Did you ever see such a beautiful sight!  (Side note, I was able to find an old Leclerc crank that will fit this warp beam on eBay for a great price. Next time I put on a warp it will be much easier!)

The heddles that I had checked out do fit this little guy, but the reed did not, so back to the Center I went this morning to switch reeds.  I had grandma time mid day for a couple of hours, but soon I will be threading this warp for the Hollywood pattern.

The Hollywood warp has been mentioned several times on this blog.  We first ran across it when Lou Ann got an Orco rug loom that is 4 harness.  It came pre-warped, and she had a terrible time trying to figure out how it was supposed to be woven.  Until she tried a straight 2x2 twill, and that was when the magic happened.  This pattern is full of chicken tracks and twill runs, and it is a lot of fun to work with.   We ran across it again in Janet Meany's  book "the Rag Rug Handbook"  That is when we discovered that the Orco loom came from the manufacturer with a black and white version of this warp, which is what I have on Carl Jr. right now.

So the warp is in place, the heddles are on the loom, the cords have been replaced, though I need to work a bit on the perfect length on several of the cords.  The "new" reed fits the loom and I will get that on once I have all the threads in their proper heddles, I have even picked out a weft pattern that I want to try, the trouble is, I can't find my copy of the Rag Rug handbook, I know it is here somewhere.

I think I could almost look at some of the placemats I have done with this pattern and figure it out, though I know I could look at Lou Ann's book anytime I need to.

This afternoon, everyone has gone home now, and it looks like Dear One is going to mow the lawn, it is my chance to go upstairs and see if I can find that book so I can get a "new" warp threaded on my "new" rug loom.


Until next time, Happy Crafting, Tina