Done!
(Actually, I finished it a week or two ago, but I’ve been a bit too busy to blog.)
I love it! It’s cushy and attractive and was inexpensive to make. The fabric strips don’t seem to stay pressed down when it’s walked on. It’s big enough for the room without costing a fortune.
One of the unexpected, but in retrospect kinda obvious, benefits of a rya rug is that the tufty nature of hides seams. I’ve learned a great deal while making it, most significantly that this method uses a LOT of fabric. If I was to make another I’d have to find a source of free rags, because if I’d used $7 mens shirts from the op shop this would have cost around $700 in fabric alone.
I’d like to try making one out of t-shirt rags. It’d have a different texture, I reckon. More spongy, not as soft, I reckon.
Next project on the floor loom will probably be a very long table runner using a combination of methods I’ve not seen before: weft rep and clasped weft. I’ve done a bit of test weaving, and I think it’ll work. Well, I hope so, anyway!
I made one from my son’s and his friends souvenir t-shirts from the age of 2 to 8, I filled it out with his underpants (he he) and my and my husbands t shirts (has anyone seen my blue t shirt). It has remained textually luxurious and I still love running my hands over it. I used cotton warp as the weft and created a thick pile. I now use 3 rows of plant tie from bunnings and this reduces the amount of fabric for the knots. One very old rug that I bought, has 5 rows of weft between knots and the pile does flatten. The plant tie use to be 5 dollars per ball and I use about 5 per rug.
Oh, that sounds wonderful! And plant tie as weft is a great tip – thanks!