Rugs

I (Barbara) have always had a desire to make rugs. I did a lot of dreaming and not much doing. My rug has to move fast. I am not the hooker artist content to keep her rug in a frame for years and work a little each evening. No my rug must take only a few weeks. It can't cost much either. I think I have in my long life of 64 years crocheted a rag rug or two. But I think I really got out of the dreaming stage when we were at Immanuel Mission. Down there they have this craft room filled with years of missionary barrel artifacts--barrels of yarn, for instance. Stacks of unwanted fabric. Usually we would use these items for craft projects with the ladies, but it was also kosher for us "missionaries" to use it for personal projects. This first picture is a rug I made using a toothbrush needle. and strips of torn fabric. We all made one, and I was ratherpleased with how quickly it went. I used old upholstery fabric mostly. I use it on my porch and it goes through all the weather, but provides an initial cleaning off of shoes before entering the house.
This next rug is made from yarn. First I finger knit tubes that provided yards and yards of a kind of jumbo yarn. Then, I raided the shop for a 3 foot long 1X1 board to which I screwed about 30 small wooded spools.Then I used this like a jumbo knitting loom. This produced am 8 foot by 30 inch washable rug which I use in my bathroom.

Well I have always been a woolaholic and collected wool blankets from any imaginable source. Once I made slipcovers for a chair and a sofa out of some beautiful red wool blankets--a little to my regret because on e of them was one I grew up with that my parents had purchased from a peddler from Minnesota Woolen Mills in the fifties. When I had acquired about a dozen blankets, I decided to make a braided rug. So I did. It went pretty quickly. I had it done in 2-3 months a couple of winters ago. It is a lovely thick, soft round rug about 8 feet in diameter. It is in my living room. one thing about these vintage blankets is the usual colors are pink and green. I tries dyeing the pink to an orange but it didn't take the dye very well. My sources say that to wash it, you take it out on your clean patio and hose it down and let it dry. Mine is staying pretty clean. I can't imagine having to do this for 4-5 years. But it's nice to know it is do-able.

After making purses in great quantities, I acquired several baskets full of scraps. So this led to the penny rug. This has been in the works for 2-3 years. Michaela helped me get started by cutting and sewing layers of circles. Then we began appliqueing them onto a green wool army blanket. That was pretty hard on the fingers, so it was on the shelf for quite some time. But Arianna got books on tape from the library to listen to while she finished it for me.

Last week I was at a thrift store and came home with a desert rose wool blanket that I paid a dollar and a half for--they called it a pet blanket. I'm kind of burned out on purses just now, so thought I would make this blanket into small rugs--appliqued and three layers soft. I'm taking them to Ostara's tomorrow, and have plans to sacrifice another of my woolen treasures for a rug.