A Rya Rug

I had a little bit of warp left after doing some rosepath rugs and decided to try a rug on page 50-51 of this rug book, which is a  favorite of mine. The rug is woven in plain weave, with spots of rya knots.

The rug will be for my granddaughter Hailee.  I'm sure she thought I forgot about her, but I didn't.  It is just that lately, I have more plans than energy.

The rya knots take small bits of yarn, 4" long.  Each knot is three strands.  I cut some thin cardboard 4" wide and about 6" - 7" long and folded them to 2" wide as cutting guides.  I wrapped the triple strands of yarn around the cardboard until I had enough for the knots in one row of the pattern and then cut them on the open side of the cardboard.

The rug has five spots across.  Each spot consists of five rows of knots, separated by a plain weave row. The first and last row of each spot has three knots and the middle three rows have five knots each.

I measured, cut and laid out the yarn for each row.

I marked the reed for the center of each spot. The first row takes the longest because I needed to find the center of each spot.  I started the spot in each row with the center knot.  It took me about 4 minutes to do the first row with fifteen knots.  The rest of the rows took about the same amount of time, even with ten more knots.



To tie a knot, place the three strands under the two warp threads on either side of the mark on the reed.

Wrap them around the two warp threads, making the cut ends even.

Separate the two warp threads and tuck the cut ends between them.

Pull on the tails and slide the knot down to the fell line.

It doesn't have to be real tight because the beater will push them tighter.

Continue adding rya knots on either side of the center one.

Remember to weave a row of rag weft between each row of knots and beat really hard.

When the spot is finished, weave enough rows of rag so the knot fringe doesn't overlap the next row of spots.

Notice the fell line isn't straight around the spot, but within a couple rows it straightens out.

The first row is complete and with a few more passes of the rag weft, it will be ready for the second row of spots. The fringe spreads out nicely even though all the knots are lying in one direction when woven in.

The rag weft is strips of ice dyed sheets, torn about 3/4" wide.  I am using two strips together.  One is pale green and the other is mottled blues, purples, and pinks. It gives a nice variegated look.

Rosepath Rag Rugs

I realized a few days ago that I need to do some catch-up with blog posts.  I originally started this blog to keep a record of my weaving projects.  I was finding I didn't even remember a lot of them until I ran across photos as reminders.

Tina Ignell's book, Favourite Rag Rugs, has some beautiful Scandinavian rug projects.  One that especially caught my eye was the Rosepath pattern.

I started my first one using a variety of cotton and rayon fabrics from my stash.

The light blue background fabric to the rosepaths is a sheet that I dyed using the snow dye technique.  I also used the same technique for the wider light green bands.  The pink is rayon, and after using it, I would say it wasn't the best choice, since it tends to fray easily.  The turquoise and black were a gauzy cotton.

After finishing, it went to my granddaughter Peyton for her birthday.

I was quite excited about this one.  The dark mottled stripes are from a cotton printed velveteen, the tan stripes are wide wale corduroy, sewn together with the nap in opposite directions to give a varigated look to a plain color fabric. The narrow red dotted stripes were from a striped fabric.  The rosepaths were six different colors of linen fabric with a background of a light cotton.  I was very pleased with how rich it looked when completed.  I decided to keep it, and my cats really like it too.  It is great for rolling on to get tummy rubs.

Click on the photo for an enlarged view.

This is the start of a polyester doubleknit rug being made as a gift for a friend's kitchen.  The warp will probably wear out before the weft, since that type of fabric wears like iron.

Completed using black, grey, red and white.

I have one more rug on the warp to complete, but it is at a standstill, hoping I can come up with the "right" colors for another granddaughter for a bedroom rug.

A Question About My Rag Rug Techniques Post

Judy wrote to me with a question:

You said you thread your edges 4-4-3-3, but you weave raising 1&2 together and 3&4 together.  Doesn't that leave your edges without warp threads on the underside?

Judy Klineburger

Here is my answer, in case others had the same question.  Here is a close-up photo of what she is asking about.

Hi Judy,
Sorry it took me a while to be able to reply.  I had to go back onto the May 23, 2010 blog post, Rag rug weaving tips, to see what I said and then look at old photos to see if I had anything I could show to you.  I ended up taking a close-up photo of one of the rugs from that particular warp.  Using that technique, my hems are plain weave, 1-3 vs 2-4, which will have each thread separate except the last four edge threads, which will be doubled.  When I get to the body of the rug, I weave 1-2 vs 3-4.  You are right about the four edge threads all rising or sinking together, acting as one thick thread.  They will alternate with the next two warp threads.  Take a look at the attached photo.  I tried to separate the weft a little right above the red so you could see the four warp threads that the weft is wrapping around.  If you don't want to raise four threads together, you could change the last two threads to shaft one or two.  The best thing to do is just try it both ways and weave the one you like the best.  It is simple to untie the last bundle on each side and re-thread the last two warp threads.

Five More Rugs Finished on Leclerc Fanny

I love finishing a warp.

This warp was a little long for me.  I start to get bored with the same colors, so I was happy to have this one finished, but I love every one of the rugs.  They are all resting on the floor for a couple days before hemming since rugs change shape after being taken off the loom.  After being stretched so tight on the loom, it takes a couple days for them to shrink down to their final size.

It is always a challenge to see what I can come up with from my fabric stash.  I make such a mess in the studio as I try and mix and match fabrics, making sure I will have enough strips to make a whole rug.  There is nothing worse than getting almost done and running out of a unique fabric before the rug is long enough.
I thought that happened with the turquoise rug, but finally found the basket with the remaining strips.

The warp made six rugs. This was the first one, finished a while ago. It used up a collection of polyester double knit from my stash.  The light color was from a bolt of very ugly gray, tan and white striped fabric. The navy and red was from my mom's stash collected years ago when women actually wore clothing from this horrible material.

When the warp wears out, the fabric strips will still be as good as new.

More polyester double knit from the same collection of my mom's.  These are all quarter-inch checked fabric.  Click on the photo to make it bigger.

 This one was fun.  I liked how the x's turned out on the white stripes.

This one also gets the x's.  The fabric came from the bargain table at Wal-mart.  It has my granddaughter Trisha's name on it since she loves anything blue.

Blues were starting to get monotonous so I changed this one and added pink and tan.  I think it is one of the prettiest ones from this group.

I am not a big fan of looper rugs but they are fast to weave.  I had a bag of fat loopers (like potholders are woven from) given to me by my friend Lou down in Arkansas.  I still haven't perfected getting nice edges and hems.  I may end up binding the ends instead of turning a hem since they are pulled in so much.  I will decide in a couple days when I start hemming all of them.

This is the draft I used, obviously repeating to add more stripes and reversing the threading for the opposite edge.  A floating selvedge would be helpful for this weave.

I will get this posted and then need to get to bed.  I have chemo again tomorrow morning and have to leave the house before 7 am.  I am so looking forward to being done.  Two more to go--tomorrow and one more next week.  Night all.

Autumn Leaves Towels Are Completed

Last October, I made a long warp for towels.  My inspiration was the beautiful fall colors on the trees in Michigan and was why I named the towels Autumn Leaves.  I was able to finish four of the towels before Christmas and they became Christmas gifts for my daughters.

I put the warp on my Leclerc Jano table loom, and after the first towel, I removed the two outermost stripes.  It was just too wide for the loom.  The next three towels wove a little better.

After cutting the first four towels off the loom, I retied the warp and started what I hoped would be five or six more towels.  As the warp decreased on the loom, it became easier to weave.  I cut a few more towels off and continued to weave the rest of the warp.  Each batch got easier.  I'm not sure if it was because of less warp on the loom, or I just got into a routine with the weaving.

I finished the last towels a few days ago.  The were wet finished, dried, pressed and hemmed, and then they were posed for a photo.  All of the towels were woven as checks with a single color except for the last one.  I had a little fun playing around with the block sizes, and I used all eight colors instead of just one.  I think I like that one the best!  It was a good way to empty all the bobbins of the yarn left on them.

Now, I am back out in the studio weaving a rug, and thinking about more rugs to follow.

I started with the intention of doing a rug with dark cloth strips in a twill pattern, but couldn't find the fabrics I wanted to use, so I went back to doubled threads in an almost tabby.  I am using up more polyester doubleknit strips I had sitting around in a box from an old braided rug attempt from many years ago.  Yea stash reduction!  This one is going quickly, but is not on my Weaver's Delight, so it is a little harder on my arms and shoulders.  I should have it done in a few days.

Hopefully, by the time this rug is complete, I will come up with fabrics to try my other design plan.  The way this is threaded, I can weave x's and diamonds, and they show up especially well in the white stripes.  I think it will make a distinctive rug.

Green Rag Rug is Hemmed

The rag rug with all kinds of prints with green is complete.  I finished the hems last night, brought it in, dampened it on both sides, stomped on it a bit to set everything and left it to dry.  I still need to work on a tiny bit of waviness on the edges, which I suppose just requires a bit more weight on the edge threads.  I thought I had enough, but apparently not.

Here is a close up.  Since the strips were only one inch, doubled, there are four raw edges on the strips, and therefore, more lose threads.  Also, the way I joined the strips cause little tags of the ends to poke out between the warps.  If you don't like that in a rug, don't use my techniques!  I think it adds to the charm of a rag rug though.

Finishing a Long Rug Warp

The warmer weather the last couple days (out of the single digits and low 20's) has gotten me back out to the studio.  Yesterday, I started cutting some more calico strips from a huge box of scraps that my aunt gave me.

These are cut 1 inch wide.  I  just use my rotary cutter, ruler, and mat.

The rug is on my Leclerc Fanny.  I put quite a bit of green warp on a while ago, and the color is getting boring.  I think I like stripes in the warp better than all one color.

For this set of rags, I am putting two one inch strips, wrong sides together, and stitching down the center to keep the right sides showing.  I just kept adding new strips until I had enough to fill a shuttle.  The first shuttles worth is already woven, and shuttle two and three are ready to go.  I will get back at it again tomorrow after I get home from work.

I should take the first Atwater-Bronson towel out to the studio, also, and get the hems sewn in. 

 Right now, I'm just too tired.  Bed is calling--