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.

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.