Finished Edith's rug!

A very exciting moment as I finished the hooking part of Edith's little rug. She says it looks like:
- A river of blood
- Muscle with the skin flayed
- Coral

Personally I am pleased with it and I do not think this photo really does it justice, but now I look at it from a distance I see that it is wider at one side than the other. DAMN!
I over estimated the quantity of rags needed and have a small bagful of pieces left over.
Taking the leftovers into account, this very small (81x51cm which is 32 x 20 inches in old money) rug used up:
Nearly all a tweed mini skirt
Most of a pink wool jacket - a fair bit left over
Almost a whole small (child size?) light pink tweed coat. This light pink tweed is a lovely texture but in this photo looks like white lines.
A hank of unspun, dyed wool
A bit of knitting yarn which I hooked 3 pieces at a time - still nearly a whole ball of it left
About 2/3 of an orange knit sweater - this caused me a lot of trouble, it was too fat to pull through the hessian holes and also looks set to fray like nobody's business
Nearly all of an orange, fine woven scarf - rather slippy and a bit too fine, I hooked two strips at a time
Some of a red wool coat.
The next job is to trim the back, and find some binding to use when glueing a backing piece to it.

Nearly there!

Am a bit worried about that wobbly edge on the unworked part - perhaps it will straighten out once it's been worked up.

24 nov

Close up of Edith's rug

I have this photo as wallpaper on my phone. It gave me a migraine.

My new frame and progress

Truffle takes an interest

Instructions for care and operation of Rigby Cloth Stripping Machine

Jenni Stuart Anderson and Mr Rigby

Jenni has sent me advice on using my Rigby cutter:

Clamp it to a table edge screwing the red screw on the left of your pic. Requires a relatively thin table.

The rotating silver metal clamp thingy should be screwed down only enough to press the fabric against the circular cutter blades underneath it so wait before you screw it down (red screw on right of pic).

You need to align the red metal fabric guide with the edge of the blade so that, when you feed fabric (I like machine knits best, or blankets) against it, turning the handle (on your right) will pull the fabric across the blades and you strip(s) come out the side facing away from you. That's aligned by loosening off the screw underneath, getting guide parallel with edge so it guides fabric straight at the cutters.

If you screw the clamp down too hard it will wear the blades out quickly so do a test run to screw it down just enough to press the fabric against the rotating blades.

I work with sections of a jumper up to about 8" wide so it's not unmanageable. It can be any length.