My knitting journey

 In the past 10 years I have focussed much more on knitting as it's portable and more sociable than sewing. It keeps my hands busy when I'm with friends and stops me drinking too quickly. 

I've learned to focus on small items which can be put in a handbag when in progress and which people are likely to wear: socks, baby hats, hot water bottle covers. Not very ambitious but great fun. 

Photos of all my makes are now in Drive. I have tried to keep a few records of my guages and favourite patterns (socks notably) in a purple notebook in my knitting basket. 

Currently I am working on a child's cardigan in tubular cotton yarn. The size is supposed to be for a four year old but it looks more like a cardigan for a newborn! 

Hopefully there might be one of those in the pipeline soon. 

Moving onto dressmaking

Over two years ago I stopped making rag rugs, pretty well, because it hurts my hand. The big pink and brown wavy rug, I am heartily proud of it - it is on a round table in my bedroom, the little table we keep photos of our kids on. But I haven't done anything much since then. The bodger used for rag rugs in particular gave me RSI. The speed shuttle was fine, though. I may one day set up my frame and do another rag rug but for now I am focussing on dressmaking and I am getting myself in gear for quilting too!
I also lost interest in a lot of things like blogging when my father died in November 2013. When he collapsed in his bathroom and my mother was trying to call me, to my eternal shame I was out of touch collecting a sewing cabinet from an Ebay seller in Wiltshire. Since then I have upgraded to a bigger sewing cabinet, installed a table for cutting out on, and taken over my mother's Janome machine which is less than 10 years old and a bit superior to my old John Lewis machine.
I have now made quite a lot of clothes, mostly very simple Sewaholic tops - 3 Oakridge blouses, no fewer than 5 - FIVE!!  Renfrew tops with cowl necks which I love to bits and wear all the time!
Today I finished off a really smart classic dress using Simplicity 1586, an "Amazing Fit" pattern. I used size 16, C cup and Curvy fit pieces and added six inches to the skirt length, which was otherwise just above the knee.
I am completely thrilled with the dress and have been posting photos of it on all the sites I subscribe to - Pattern Review, the Sewing Forum, London Dressmakers Club, hoping to garner compliments. Here I am looking very smug. Photo by Aggie. (Sewage pipe by Roman Lake Ltd, installed for their personal toilet on the building site which used to be our garden.)

As well as the good fit round the hips I am pleased with the neckline and I put this down to the fact that I staystitched the neckline AND armholes. I also took a bit of trouble finishing off the seam allowances with my serger, because this lightweight grey suiting is very fray-ish. 

Here are some other things I've been making:
First, a jacket made last Christmas which started out as a shirtdress. The stretch cotton twill was too heavy for a dress, and it dawned on me I don't even like shirtdresses so with the help of a lovely sewing teacher in Ealing I shortened it to a jolly, flowery hip-length jacket. Wore it to parties last Christmas.

Everything has been for me, except I made a simple little pinafore in navy corduroy for Edith. She wants a gypsy blouse but hasn't got round to giving me the fabric she bought for it yet.
I haven't felt I am getting better at dressmaking but when I look at that grey dress and compare it with the thing I made a year ago, which was another Amazing Fit pattern, I think I might have got a bit better.

And compare this monstrosity I made back in 2013 

With this Oakridge blouse I knocked up very quickly for a smart occasion the other day...

I think my fabric choice and pattern placing skills are improving. 

I have some nicer labels now to sew into items I am proud of:

This label is sewn into my proudest achievement so far - a Janet Pray Jacket Express in a lightweight cotton twill. Like the grey suiting I bought this fabric on spec at the London Sewing and Knitting Show in Olympia two years ago. It's so cute and I am so proud of the jacket as it is by far the most complicated garment I have ever sewn in 42 years of sewing! It deserves a blog post of its own. As does my serger....Later perhaps. 

THE BIG PINK AND ORANGE AND BROWN WAVY LINE RUG IS ACTUALLY FINISHED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here is a selection of photos I have taken over the past 12 months - it is nearly 12 months - since I started it. This is an early view of the front. I worked the brown lines first and used them as guides for the other colours. I have used a speed shuttle as supplied by Jenni Stuart Anderson, and an excellent adjustable wooden frame -  an "Easifix frame" made by Christine and Eddie Birch of Farmhouse Frames (tel 01492 640881). (The canvas being in front of a window was helpful). The frame is brilliant - it allows you to see an exceptionally large area of canvas at one time and is also easy to dismantle and reassemble when you need to move the canvas along. I notice other ruggers whip their canvas to the sides of the frame as well. I haven't done that and I admit my rug is not a perfect oblong, but you know? Sometimes life is too short. Though "Life is too short" would be a disastrous motto for anyone addicted to rag-rug making...

The first corner, with tags. (I've got several of these photos up already, I'm just putting them all here in one place for convenience)

Here you can see how the pink and white printed cotton jersey fabric just doesn't really work out...

A detail of the finished rug before I had pulled out all the pink printed strips and the pale grey strips and replaced them. The picture below shows what the rug looked like after I had done that, which was tiresome, but I'm really glad I did it - otherwise the ship would have been spoiled for a ha'porth of tar. (The colour is a bit odd, this happens when I take photos with my phone in various lights)

This shows you what I have done on the back. After poking all ends to the front (using a bodger) and trimming the whole rug, I ironed fusible interfacing to the whole back surface. I trimmed the allowance round the edges of the canvas to roughly the same all round, 2-3 inches, and glued it down with Everbuild Stick2 Instant Spray Contact Adhesive All Purpose High Strength Bond. It is a very easy to apply spray. I considered latex but decided against it, on the grounds that our climate is essentially damp and latex backing does not breathe well. 

Then I pinned, basted and sewed strong petersham binding to a piece of canvas cut to size, a couple of inches shorter and wider than the finished rug size. That's the zigzag line you can see on this picture. I didn't bother to use co-ordinating yarn, I just used what was on my sewing machine. Then I glued this backing canvas piece to the back of my rug: first I rolled it into a sausage, then unrolled it gluing it down a few inches at a time, stamping it down with my knees as I went along. This was fun. 

Lastly I whipstitched the petersham binding to keep it all together. There are a few daggy bits of thread on the back and some of my basting thread won't come out because I didn't bother to pull out the basting thread before using the GLUE, soddit! This final bit of sewing hurt. It was tough on my hands, my fingers got very sore on the canvas and I was quite bad tempered with Dan when he asked if I was going to bed yet. 

Feeling very smug today so I have ironed one of my little labels to the back:

Below is the FINISHED ARTICLE. 

One handmade hooked rag rug. 

Size: 87x67cm. 

Materials: hessian canvas and recycled cotton textiles. 

I am WELL PLEASED. Now what do I do with it?

PS I have turned part of our top floor landing into my sewing area. This is the first time I've ever had a dedicated sewing space. For sewing to be enjoyable, it helps if there is a place you can retreat to for a few minutes at a time without worrying about tidying up and such.

I've done it! Well, apart from the backing and binding. I can't believe I've actually finished this enormous rug. Not enormous really of course - it is 122cm by 85 cm - but large by rag rug standards.
What have I learned from this project?
1. To persevere, doing a little at a time but very regularly. Otherwise it sits doing nothing for weeks and makes me feel guilty. The "little at a time" habit requires a dedicated work space which does not need to be cleared out of sight from day to day. I think I could have done this rug within 3 months if I had done a little every day.
2. To neaten as I go. At first I couldn't be bothered to tuck the strip ends towards the front at all because I was so enamoured of the wonderful power rush the speed shuttle gives me. This meant they dangled down over the canvas and annoyed me as I was working. So then I started tucking them back, though not all of them. So when I had finished the whole rug I had to go over it all again tucking all the threads to the front. Then I had to go over it all again snipping the ends level. Doing one job across a large rug is boring and physically something of a strain - I am getting a bit of pain in my right hand that doesn't respond well to repeated actions. Better to tidy up as you go along.
3. To decide early on that a particular colour isn't working, rather than carrying on using it thinking I might get used to it. When I had come to the end of the rug I realised that the light grey ribbed cotton jersey and the pink and white printed jersey didn't work and I had to go back and take all of it out.

So - I feel really proud of the rug but it's been a learning process too. What I haven't mentioned is that I just love the way it looks. This photo does not do it justice: in real life, it looks positively alive.

Wavy pink and orange and brown rag rug nearly finished!

The wavy pink/orange/brown rug is almost completely done. I can't understand why it's taken me this long - I just stopped working on it for a while I think. I certainly took a break from rag rugging when we got Merlin the magical cockapoo.
I am currently working to eliminate the pale grey and light stripy fabric strips which don't sit well with the other colours. This means pulling out about 100 strips and replacing them one by one. In this photo you can see several of the pale grey strips (from a ribbed top of mine) and pink and white printed jersey strips (from something donated). They don't work, they are too pale and the printed jersey is worst as it's hard to keep the printed side facing outwards. No more prints for me, not for my rugs anyway! I used some wigwam yarn here and there, as my colours started getting too samey.

I haven't actually used up all the canvas I marked out for this rug as I felt I was getting a bit bored, it was big enough for a decent hearthrug and anyway my stock of strips was starting to get a little low. (Hence the purchase of wigwam yarn.)
I still have a lot of the brown strips left however, as I used these sparingly to create the wavy section dividers.
My next plan in the rag rugging department is to make cushion covers, probably using linen and that amazing wigwam yarn which I used a bit on this rug.
And my other big project is to get back into dressmaking, inspired by my daughter Edith who was fired up by the Great British Sewing Bee programme to get me to teach her to sew. The trouble with sewing is it takes so much time to get everything out and set up and then put it all away again when you need the sitting room to look tidy, so I plan to turn the top landing into a functioning space again, a real sewing room.
I've bought an overlocker on Ebay!

Update on my mother's rug

Progress has been slow not because the work is difficult but because I would rather be watching the Olympics than in my bedroom rag rugging. I never imagined I would write that!
Looking at the rug this way up, the worked area measures 87cm along the left-hand edge and 67cm along the bottom edge. The ends of fabric strips hanging out are nothing to worry about - they will all be trimmed back later. You can see quite a difference in tidyness between the left-hand part which has been already trimmed and the more recently worked area to the right.

It just keeps getting wavier

Those last pictures were terrible! I took them in the evening under electric light. Never again!

Wavy Cynthia rug so far

Loving my speed shuttle. It is a living thing.
The canvas, too, becomes alive after a few square inches have been hooked; a tension is developed which was not there before.
These pix show back and front. A lot of ends to be trimmed.

starting Cynthia rug

My mother wanted pinks/terracottas/earth tones. I stripped up 28 garments in a mixture of appropriate tones including the light blue she wanted. The result I am getting is bright, bright, bright - I am worried that she won't like it - it's too bright for her. Should I add in more brown (which I was keeping for borderlines) or what?

Notice however how easy it is to manage the stitches with the speed shuttle when natural light comes through from the back of the canvas. Bright or not, this was one happy hour spent listening to Radio 3 and painting in fabric.

Finally, the speed shuttle

At last, after many weeks of calculating, stripping and prevaricating, I actually started work on the speed shuttle rug I have been planning for my mother.
We have had a bit of trouble finding a place where I can prop the frame up securely enough to work on it. I tried several options in the living room; Dan and I experimented with step ladders and easels in the kitchen; finally I took it to my bedroom and discovered that the ugly plastic crates I keep teaching stuff in have a kind of lip on the edge. They are also so full of teaching crap that they are really heavy. Lean the frame against my window - natural light from behind the canvas is great! And the lip on the edge of the box holds it up.

That orange square check thing is a seat pad from one of our dining chairs which fell apart. Dan fished it out and has given it to me as my Official Rag Rugging Kneeler Pad. So that's why we never threw it away!

I am stripping in the back garden today...

And yesterday I visited the Denham Roundabout Saturday car boot sale for the first time. Came home with a shopping trolley groaning with a rainbow of garments, and the whole trip cost £20 including fuel.
I have set up a piece of canvas on my large frame and am embarking on a rug for my mum in wavy lines, earth tones of pink, coral, terracotta, brown and fawn.

JWMT rug done: Next project!

A lovely feeling: my father's blue/grey/heather proddy rug is turned, bound and stitched, rolled, wrapped, tied and ready for delivery. Now for the next project - a hooked rug using the speed shuttle and frame.
I am making this rug for my mother who will be 88 in April.
I am choosing earth tones of brown, fawn, pink and a tiny bit of grey here and there. The picture shows a stash of 20 different items of clothing gathered in from family, friends and freecyclers.

JWMT rug finished (in effect)

Except for the obligatory trimming, turning, basting and sewing of webbing, my father's rug is finished! It was a lot quicker than I had expected. I began it in early December, put it to one side to finish up Edith's rug and picked it up again just a few weeks ago.
It used:
Some lightweight girl's jeans; a pair of cotton blue twill trousers; parts of a couple of old duvet covers; a child's purple trousers; a child's mauve cotton smock; two pairs of black cotton jersey leggings; something else in sweatshirt fabric I can't identify; some grey trousers; some grey leggings; a blue jersey cotton pillowcase (can't remember if I used the whole pillowcase or not); some stiff lavender coloured linen fabric from the kind donation by www.emmalovesretro.com.
I started running out of stuff at the weekend and had to go to a charity shop last Sunday to find 3 large men's teeshirts in purple, grey and black to finish it off. (Can't believe how hard it is to find an old teeshirt for less than £4 in Chiswick.) I have a good little bag of bits left over from that expedition.

Close up of my father's bedside rug. To recap what a proddy rug is: the effect is made of hundreds of little rectangles of cotton fabric (woven and knit) pulled through the holes in a piece of hessian. It is very nice to walk on, springy and fresh and idea for a bedside rug.

The finished size is 91cm x 67 cm which is 6,097 square centimetres or 0.6 of a square metre.

Finished rug seen on a kingsize bed

There is something intensely satisfying about making something like this and I have totally enjoyed the experience from start to finish. Strangely, it just isn't anything like as boring as you might think. Something about handling the fabric, or about putting your hand into a bag and coming up with a different piece each time...

This is what the back of the rug looks like. You can see now how the bits of fabric have been pulled through one hessian hole and out through another with a rugging bodger. Once you have discovered bodgers, you find them everywhere.
Try not to point out how the lines are not very straight, please.

Note to self

In future use woollens for proddy and cotton jersey for hooky. No contest. Having said that, father's proddy rug in grey, blue, black, purple, lilac cottons is doing well.

Edith's rug all backed and ready to go to Oxford

After ironing interlining to the back of the rug I turned, pinned then tacked the edge allowance.
I pinned another piece of canvas to the back and cut it to a bit smaller than the rug.
I laid the rug out flat, wrong side up, and sprayed it with spray rubber solution glue. Then I quickly rolled out the backing piece and smoothed it across the whole back - a tense moment.
I pinned then whip-stitched tough petersham binding (sold as carpet binding) around the edge.
Then I showed the rest of the family the fruits of my three months labour and they all said, Yeah, right.
Oh well, onto the next one!

Doldrums

Trying to complete Edith's "flame" rug has been quite depressing as I learned that I'd done it ALL WRONG. Apparently I should have left all the ENDS AT THE FRONT OF THE RUG and not at the back. If you have ends hanging out at the back, they make lumps and after being walked on for a bit your rug will acquire holes, I was told.
So I had to turn all the ends to the front, which was boring and difficult. The only thing spurring me on was the knowledge that I would NOT have to do this again, as I intend not to make the same mistake twice.
Anyway at last I finished that part of the task, and set to the task of actually backing the rug.
I started by applying iron-on interlining (another hint from one of the Hooked in London ladies) to the back, cutting it to fit the rugged area.
Then I realised that I had rugged so close to the edge of my canvas that I hadn't left much turn-in fabric, one corner being particularly bad. So far I've turned the turn-in allowance all round and pinned then tacked it down (see picture)
Next I'm going to cut a piece of canvas a tiny bit smaller than the rug, and GLUE it to the back with my smart spray-on fabric glue.
Then I will sew tough binding all round the edge, up to the edge of the rug on the back.

That should hold it all together pretty well, I think. Gulp.

Colour thoughts

I am not naturally good at choosing colour so I have to work a bit above my pay grade with this rag rug thing.
After some reflection I've decided to keep green out of Daddy's rug and stick to blues, greys and a bit of black and a hint of purple. I want a fairly sombre effect as I think that's what he'd prefer. The purple will truly only be a hint as I only have a small pair of kid's jeans and a teeshirt in purple to use, so necessity must be the mother of invention.

Proddy rug for my father

My father is 91 and a Yorkshireman. The first time I saw rag rugs, I was with my parents, having tea in a stone cottage on the Yorkshire moors. We were guests of Bob and Elsie Merrington, a Dales gamekeeper and his wife with whom my father had become friends. The flagstone floors in their cottage were partly covered with rugs which, Elsie explained a little shyly, she had made on winter evenings. "There's Bob's old corduroy breeches there" she said, pointing to a dark mustard strip in one rug.
My mother, always a craft-fiend, was enchanted, but she was already well set on her own complex and profound needlepoint journey, a voyage of discovery and skill which eventually led to an entire medieval Norfolk church being almost entirely covered in needlepoint and cross-stitch of considerably better taste than most; so she never got into rag rugs.
But I belong to the generation in love with recycling - this, I am sure, why the concept of rag rugs has gripped me. (I'm aware that I've inherited my mother's aversion to any attempt at realist representation - we can't help feeling that "if you need to paint, use paint.")

My parents are very old. I have started a simple proddy rug for my father in blues and greys which will in time be joined by a hooked rug for my mother, probably in earth tones. Both small bedside cotton rugs, to be done as efficiently and quickly as possible.

I was going to use purple notes in my father's rug but on reflection greens will be more appropriate - if he can be said to have a favourite colour it is surely green.

So far, I've done the blue and grey tones.

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.