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.

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.

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!

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.

Frame

OMG. My poor credit card.

I couldn't go on any more using the embroidery frame I bought. The frame can't hold the bulky worked rug and it's very hard work hooking without a frame.

So I called up a lovely lady in Nottinghamshire called Cilla Cameron and within 5 minutes she had talked me into purchasing this octagonal lap frame. I don't even what to write the price down here. It should be here on Monday.

Cilla was very understanding and agreed with me that once you've started making rag rugs from recycled textiles you are bitten. It's absolutely consuming. It was like talking to a kindred spirit.

And I still don't even have the big frame I will need if I am ever to use my speed shuttle...but Christmas is coming soon.

Edith's rug, second day

My plan is to use the red rays as guidelines, filling in the gaps inbetween with a hearty variety of pinks and oranges.
I don't like the dayglo orange. But here's the thing: the joy of rag rugs - this type, at any rate - is that if you don't like a colour after you have started using it, you just pull it out and put in a different one. Fortunately I acquired a nice sludgy autumnal orange and a very clear orange - both woollen cloth - which more than amply replace the dayglo orange (taken from a cheap sweater).
This rug is already acquiring a very organic feel to it, despite the fact that the fabrics used for it are from not particularly organic sources such as Marks and Spencer, Next, Primark and Alberto Ferreti (Edith's favourite skirt...now that she is coming out of her illness, thankfully it does not fit her any more so we can say GOODBYE to it.

Sourcing materials

Buying the tools was the easy bit. Now I am having quite a job sourcing materials to turn into rag rugs.

I would be glad to hear from anyone who has any ideas for sources...or even who feels like donating a few bits and pieces themselves.
I have raided everybody's cupboards. I think there are a few suits still left in my DH's wardrobe which he's hoarding away from me, even though he never wears them. While I'm working out my cunning plan to release these suits from captivity and rip them to shreds I have to face the fact that I must go elsewhere for my stuff.

So far I have...

• Put messages on local Freecycle lists. Result: about four nice replies, mostly people who say they will bear me in mind when bagging up charity-shop items in future. And one who said, yes, come and get my bag of stuff ASAP!
• Sent messages round to friends and various groups I am a member of: for example, the West and North West London Doula UK branch. Results: very promising. Lovely doulas are always keen on any kind of recycling activity and several emailed me straight back.
• Left messages on Facebook and Twitter. Results: nothing so far.
• Explored dumps and recycling depots. Results: disappointing. The guys at the local dump (ever noticed that the blokes who work in dumps are always so nice?) told me, regretfully, that they are absolutely NOT allowed to let me root around in their big textile bin. They have to lock it up every night. "The Poles come and raid it otherwise." (Er...how can they tell if they are Polish just from CCTV footage?) There is a big textile recycling depot tantalisingly near me and they aren't answering their emails.
• Checked out the times and days of regular car boot sales near me. Crikey, I had no idea there were so many! Hounslow on Saturday mornings; Chiswick Community College and Hammersmith Grove on Sunday mornings. Many, many more. I am looking forward to my first car boot sale.
• Bought stuff on Ebay. Ridiculous! I am paying postage for everything! And the first thing that arrived was a Wallis jacket which I liked so much I decided to wear it instead. Well, it was only £3.99...

PRODDY small project 2: sunflower bag

I

I bought 4 of these plain hessian bags from Jenni to decorate and possibly give as gifts. This is my first effort. It is a little lopsided but not so's you'd notice. Not sure I want to work much on these bags; I hadn't realised that the hessian is backed with plastic which makes pushing the proddy through even harder work than it is normally.
I've put this bag on Etsy.com for sale. Etsy.com seems to be an enormous site populated by craftspersons far more clever than me so I may have just lost the twenty cents (US $) insertion fee on this; I can't imagine anyone ever finding my little bag among the mountains of stuff there, most of which is in the USA anyway.
For this flower I used scraps donated to me by www.emmalovesretro.co.uk who lives round the corner.
My hands hurt, especially the ball of my right thumb. That bodger is a bugger.
Today I collected another bag of discarded clothing, nearly all bright cottons, from a kind neighbour who saw my plea for unwanted textiles on hammersmithandfulhamfreegle@yahoogroups.com.
Thanks Cheryl!

Edith's rug

My first hooked rug is for Edith. She wants it in red, pinks and oranges. She also wanted some purple but I've vetoed that. I think it will be quite garish enough.
I started by hammering a nail into the carpet in the living room, tying a piece of twine to it and using this as a "compass" to draw radiating lines across the canvas which was spread out a few inches away.
Then with my rotary cutter, ruler and self-healing board ("You aren't making scratches in our table, are you?" says husband) I cut lots of strips from a red wool coat of Aggie's which she never liked. Using a round 25cm embroidery frame I hooked a ray pattern in red and plan to fill it in with pinks and oranges.

Starting my first hooked rug

Jenni's advice is to NOT mix fabric types (wool/cotton) when doing a floor rug. As I only plan to do floor rugs I'm taking this advice to heart.

Jenni Stuart Anderson's rag rug course

Over the summer I became a bit disheartened with my toothbrush rug. It is a slow business and creates a lot of dust. I signed up for a rag rug course with Jenni Stuart Anderson at Hackney City Farm. Ten of us sat in a barn made of straw bales and learned how to prod and hook. I found an inexplicable enthusiasm welling up inside me and it is no exaggeration to say that ever since I have been unable to think of ANYTHING EXCEPT RAG RUGS. Strongly suspect some kind of displacement activity going on here...linked to worries about kids, money, my NCT diploma, depression, menopause, money again...

At the course we were each given a piece of hessian and I decided to make a round cushion cover. I now have to turn it into a cushion which is the boring part.
My hands hurt. Having sliced off the tops of 2 fingers hasn't helped.

Second rug project started

While staying at my parents' over the weekend I was able to make a start on my second project. I'm going to be a bit more organised this time.

The overall colour is indigo blue - I'm planning to use mainly old denim jeans - with bits of green-based checks allowed in. Each time I knot in a new rag I put a similar length in the same fabric in a "return" bag - these will be used at the end of the rug so that the pattern remains symmetrical, or pretty nearly so. That way if I pick up new sources I can still make it look more or less planned.
The width is 70cm. Note for the future; do the first row of knots quite loosely. I've packed these in too tight and immediately got into tension problems. Actually the start of this rug was rubbish though the colours are good.
I aim to get to about 150-180 cm.
I'd like to give this rug to one of my children.

Done my first rug!

It's true that I started it last summer but I have not been working on it every evening since then. And it is not very big - just big enough to make a small bathmat.
I used a large faded green tablecloth and some old pink Laura Ashley material that had been purchased to make curtains about 30 years ago.
Pink and green - a bit 80s, I know.
But it's done, it's a slightly weird shape with a sort of waist in the middle where my tension control and edging went haywire. But it's done, and it's servicable, and I've still got lots of strips from these two items left over.

Which helps to give me an idea of what amount of fabric one needs.
Looking at this picture I have to admit it is a bloody odd shape.