The Making of a Rug

I’m always interested in trying something different. In a previous post I mentioned having a little sitting room. It’s the coziest room in the house. The only thing missing is a rug for the floor.

As soon as I saw this yarn I knew that it was perfect. The colours are exactly the same as the picture on the wall! It even has a tiny bit of purple.

Here’s all my wasted ends!

I’ve said before that sampling is very important, but I never do it. I tell everyone that they should always sample. But I hate it, I just want to weave. I might have learned my lesson with this one though. I wanted a good sturdy rug but also wanted the yarn, not the cotton, to take center stage. I warped the cotton double and very quickly realized it would overwhelm the yarn. I ended up unthreading half the cotton

Plain weave is beautiful, but I wanted some texture for this mat. I thought I would try pulling loops out to create a diamond pattern. Then I needed something to hold the loops in place. In the end I wove one row yarn pulling out individual loops and giving them a little twist, then a row of cotton pressed firmly to hold everything all together.

I’m really pleased with the results. It shrunk more than I had anticipated (I warped for 32” width, finished it is only 24”) and boy it takes a lot of yarn on to make all those loops! But I love the texture! It’s possible I am going to need a bigger loom though; I’d love to make this wider and longer. Longer I think it would make a fabulous hall runner. In my little sitting room though it is perfect!