Rug1 finished

It didn't take too long after all - and in fact I didn't finish it myself.  Anne, after a quick run through, wove the last foot or so in no time at all.

Yes - it even has sequins 

 As noted in the first photo, the hand twisted cloth certainly has it all - sequins, sheer, bright (very bright in some cases), and patterned.  Mostly though they have a couple of well contrasted colours.  Their knots were sometimes tidy - when the 'rope' was thin - sometimes bulky, when two larger strands were twisted.  Perhaps as part of the manufacturing process both ends of the roll had 10 plus feet of fairly tidy and consistent rope - which balance out the whole rug, which at times had wildly varying thicknesses.

Anne finishing up the rug

Beating the last shots

Ready for finishing

The rug is now ready for finishing - we have to tie off the ends (next time I will sew it while on the loom which will make it a lot neater), and then sew in the weft joins (at the selvedge), and finally run some binding right around the edge,

All up it was only 35 inches long - which happily was also the width off the loom (36 inches at the reed), so we have a square rug.

Rug1

I'm just back from a trip to St Louis (Monday through Thursday) and doing a little bit of weaving on the rug.  Straight forward enough:


     Fast, because of the size of the weft

     Tedious, because of the 'twist' in the yarn

     Slowed down, by the limited amount of weft on the ski-shuttle.

About 10 inches of rug

Close up of the very random pattern

It shouldn't take too long to weave.  I've enough warp on the loom for all of the weft in the original ball - it should end up about 4.5 feet long (by 3 foot wide).

Rag rug

The next project on the loom will be a rag rug - after spotting some rather interesting 'prepared' rag yarn for the weft.  From India it is all recycled cloth and at the moment I have no idea how much is in the ball.  We'll have to measure it to work out how large a rug it will make.  Once that is done and the warp yarn I have ordered has arrived I'll be able to start.  It is destined for the kitchen (tile) floor.

The weft 'rag' yarn.

Blanket finished

The baby blanket (for the baby shower/house warming) is finished - a couple of hours work after coming home from the Guild meeting saw the weaving finished with plenty of time (two weeks) to spare.

Overall the weaving went pretty well: one broken warp threat (allowed me to practice repair techniques!), one threading error (which I will have to live with), and some fairly radical draw in (which I could probably counter better with a real temple!).

Final stripes (and my 'chain' temple)

Off the loom (and that's a painting by Connel Byrne)

Knotting the fringe

Knotting finished - celebration.

The knotting went very quickly with Anne on one end and I on the other, then it was a couple of quick darning jobs to tidy up the broken thread and a loop I had missed on the selvedge, and trimming the fringe back to about an inch.  Final job will be to give it a wash and dry/iron, then attach a label.

The final blanket (with colours that coincidentally match the babies room - seen in photo's)