Thursday, December 31, 2009

Question for the weavers

Partner was complaining the other day that there were not enough rag rugs to always have a clean one on hand for when the dog goes out and in. Portland is really wet in the winter.
I of course immediately began thinking on how to turn all my old fabric scraps and worn out clothes into rugs. I know almost nothing about weaving but was willing to give it a go. As my mind worked on solving problems that were occurring there I began knitting a rug from old T-shirts, (see below). I wasn't really pleased with the resulting fabric but was having problems resolving the issue of joining the strips end to end without having to stop and sew them on as I went. A single long strip sewn together beforehand seemed like a bad idea as there would then be a lot of "tail" to pull through with each pass through the loom and I didn't want to build a complicated loom. I finally stumbled on to the idea of slitting the end of each strip and then joining the kind of like joining two loops. No bulky knots!
For the loom I just took 4 boards, two of which were drilled with pilot holes every 1/2 inch and screwed those two to the other two. A double strand of string was then strung on to the frame and with the use of a bamboo "collar pointer" weaving commenced.

I'm getting an "hourglass" shape thing going on though. Should the nails be closer together? Is there a trick I need to know to avoid this situation?

Here's the knit rug start. It's old T-shirts cut in continuous spirals and wound up as "yarn" and garter stitch knit on size 11 U.S. needles.