Cat Scan

Day 139: The second "jeans rug" came off the loom yesterday and I wanted to measure it for my weaving records. I tossed it down on the living room floor, intending to go for the yard stick, and the next time I turned around, it was being cat-scanned. I hadn't even tied the fringe yet, but apparently it has the official seal of approval. The next (last) rug on this warp will be made from t-shirt strips. In fact, I realized I was running out of denim halfway through this one and had to put in an emergency call to friends in the hopes of someone having a pair of jeans they were anxious to retire. As it turns out, I have half a dozen strips left from the donation, the "seed" for another series of rugs somewhere down the line. How well do these hold up? Suffice to say that I am still using a couple I made over thirty years ago.

A Rugged Rug

Day 305: The rag rug is finished, and unlike commercially-produced rag rugs, this is a Rugged Rug, meant to withstand years of use. The coloured weft is hand-twisted from two lengths of quilting scraps, plied together as rag rope. While not board-stiff, this rug definitely will not flop over on itself when lifted by a careless toe. It will not trip you. It is heavy. It will stay in place with no need of latex backing or a non-slip mat. Every pick was beaten firmly into place until the fabric cordage was even more compacted against its companions, resulting in a durable, washable rug which will probably outlast its creator. With planned obsolescence the default for modern products, if you want quality and permanence, do as I do: make it yourself.

Jack Loom

Day 301: The rag rug project is proving to be a bit more labour-intensive than I'd anticipated, but that's not actually a Bad Thing. It keeps me entertained. The floor loom is currently occupied by a summer-and-winter piece (halfway done!), so I brought my small Schacht loom out of hiding and set it up on a card table. Due to issues with a repaired shoulder, I find it easiest to operate the jacks while standing at the table rather than sitting, not that I'd get much "sitting" done for as frequently as the weaving space is taken up by the heavy twisted weft. At most, I can squeeze in eight throws before I have to advance the warp, but this is also a Good Thing because the rag rope is so thick that it is almost impossible to pass a shuttle through the shed. Instead, I twist 8-12 feet, weave it, wind it onto the front roller, and then settle into my chair to twist another dozen feet or so. The weft must be packed tightly, and in lieu of the traditional wooden beater, I'm using a 4" afro pick, working my way across the weft after each pass. Suffice to say I'm getting a variety of physical exercise out of this weaving, and the quilting leftovers make for a bright and cheery rug.

Making Rag Rope

Day 293: First, I'm going to give you a tidbit of generational wisdom which was handed down to me by my mother who learned it from my grandmother. In their respective eras, products were not as readily available as they are today. Many items were repurposed after they had outlived their original uses, giving rise to the old saw, "Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without." It is a philosophy I embrace, and it goes without saying that the world would be better off without the overabundance of single-use disposables we see today.

Now enter the sewing stash, and mind how you open the door to that cupboard lest you find yourself caught in a fabric avalanche. Anyone who sews experiences this dilemma to some degree. Trimmings from the cutting table are too long, too big to be thrown away. They go in a box (possibly labelled "quilting scraps" as mine is), in a drawer, in a trunk. The pile grows with each garment made. The more ambitious members of our unofficial guild of hoarders make quilts; our closets are full of quilts, our friends have quilts, and still the seams threaten to burst on our drawers, boxes and cupboards. Oh, whatever can we do to relieve the pressure? How about making some rag rope? It's easy, it's a mindless occupation (you can do it while watching TV), and it opens up a new chapter in our mental Big Book of Projects.

To start with, you're going to need strips of fabric. How many? Enough for your project. I'm planning to use this hank for a woven rag rug, but you could just as easily turn it into a basket, a washable shopping bag, rustic mats to put under hot dishes on your dinner table. For my rug, however, I will need roughly 100 yards. I turned out 12 yards yesterday, in between all the other things I was doing. So, assuming that you're going to make a rug (woven, braided or sewn), cut your strips approximately 1.5" wide. If some of your fabrics are lighter than others, cut those strips slightly wider. Tie or sew the ends of two strips together as a starting point. Let's go!

Step 1: pinch and hold your starting point, then take one of the strips and give it a few turns AWAY from you (the direction is important, so listen up). You can do this by engaging a finger about four inches from the pinch point, and yes, your finger is probably going to get trapped a few times before you get the hang of this motion. Once you have the twists made, you're ready for Step 2: bring the twisted strip TOWARD you so that your second strip is now in the upper position. Reposition your pinch point to hold the twist in place. Step 3 is essentially a repeat of Step 1 using the other fabric strip, and likewise, Step 4 is a repeat of Step 2. Completion of the four steps will bring you back to your original position. You can make your twists looser or tighter depending on your project preferences. New strips can be added in several ways. I prefer to overlap the ends by an inch, fold them together and take a few stitches through all layers to secure them. If raw edges or the occasional sight of the reverse side of a print offend your obsessive-compulsive nature, you could fold and press the strips to minimize their occurrence. I'm not that particular. After all, this is a rag project and should have a "homegrown" feel.

When Projects Go Awry

Day 186: I've decided to call this episode "When Projects Go Awry," although it could easily be titled, "Making The Best Of A Bad Thing." Y'see, a year or so ago, I decided to make a braided rag rug out of strips of old t-shirt fabric. I kept at it for a couple of weeks until my little rug was approximately bath-mat sized, trying to convince myself that I could keep going despite the excruciating pain in my repaired shoulder. I'd push through an hour per day...a half-hour...fifteen minutes...six inches...let me just get around the corner...but regardless of when I laid it aside or how many days I let elapse between stints of working on it, the agony in the damaged tendons and atrophied muscles would keep me awake at night, on the verge of tears from pain. It takes a bit to put me off a project once I've begun it, but I finally realized that I was not going to be able to complete the rug without further injuring myself. Bottom line: time to throw in the towel.

Still, I put the mat away in the form I'd last worked on it, and it hounded me every time I saw it in my crafts room. A few days ago, a friend mentioned that she wanted to weave some rag rugs, you might have seen a flash of light come on over my head. It seemed entirely reasonable that I could undo all my hard work and use the t-shirt strips for a woven rug. Not only that, it would give me an excuse to bring my tabletop loom out of garage storage. As my readers may recall, I've been rationing my stints at the floor loom to one colour sequence per day, drawing out the pleasurable work of creating a tablecloth, so setting up the table loom to weave rag rugs seemed like a justifiable deviation from my general rule of "only one of any fiber-art at a time" on the basis of scale (yeah, I know...that's stretching it).  It also gave me a chance to put to good use the two antique rag shuttles handed down to me from a friend's friend's grandmother. As projects go, this is a quick one. After spending a day unstitching and another unbraiding, I had half a rug done by bedtime yesterday even with the other weaving I had done as a matter of course. Now I need to sew more strips together so I can finish the job.

Rag Rug Progress

Day 24: The rag rug is progressing, albeit slowly due to shoulder issues. It's roughly half-done, and I'm thinking I may need to make a harsher review of my old t-shirts in order to have enough fabric for a 2' x 3' size. Why is it so difficult to toss old clothing? Unless the design commemorates some special event, there can't be an emotional attachment at work. Is it just our basic instinct to hoard, or is it because we can't bear to trash something which has been a part of our lives for a few years? Thinking ahead, I sorted my old jeans a few days ago: over-stretched elastic waistbands, ragged cuffs, stained knees, "skinnier-me" pants, and set to cutting them into inch-and-a-quarter rug strips. But why had I kept them instead of sending them off to a thrift shop? Don't get me wrong. I'm glad I didn't throw them out. I'm just curious about the psychology which made me bag them and tuck them away in the closet. I don't have enough strips for another rug yet, but at least I have a head start on the most tedious part of creating one.