THE RUGBEE RUG
My basket buddy, Teresa, and I were teaching basket weaving class at Silver Dollar City in Branson, Missouri, in 2000, when I happened upon a lady demonstrating making wool rugs. She told the crowd that her grandmother had someone make the special crochet needle with a small hook on one end and a tappered blunt point at the other end. It is ~8" long Then she started creating lovely oval or square rugs.
Wool strips, 1/2" to 5/8" wide, are cut and can be any length, from as small as 1" to as long as a yard. There is no wool wasted when making this type of rug. The width of your strips determine the thickness of the rug. Woven wool has to be cut on the bias to prevent unraveling. I had this navy blue and red check wool from a box of fabric/notions that my grandmother gave me.
Once the strips are cut, you load the needle by pushing through the middle of the strip onto the needle with a 1/2" space between folds. When you come to the end of one strip, you begin another strip, as if it was one continuous strip . It is not necessary to sew these strips together because as you begin to crochet the rug they will stay in place.
Using carpet warp, you begin to crochet between the loops, then pull off one fold, crochet, pull off a fold and repeat around the rug. When you get to the curve part, you pull off two folds to increase the size of the rug. This keeps it from rolling up and allows it to lay flat.
The folds lay close together and this is the depth of the rug. While I was watching that first demonstration, if there was a strip a bit taller that the rest, the lady took her scissors and trimmed it to be even. I was amazed!
You can see when I separate the folds, the crotchet part is well hid.
I added a few extra colors of green and gold here and there and added a strip of black to break it up. Notice how small the extra green and gold are. This was my first rug and I didn't know how big it was going to be so I thought that adding extra colors would help make it a decent size.
The folds lay close together and this is the depth of the rug. While I was watching that first demonstration, if there was a strip a bit taller that the rest, the lady took her scissors and trimmed it to be even. I was amazed!
You can see when I separate the folds, the crotchet part is well hid.
I added a few extra colors of green and gold here and there and added a strip of black to break it up. Notice how small the extra green and gold are. This was my first rug and I didn't know how big it was going to be so I thought that adding extra colors would help make it a decent size.
This rug has a dreamy, fuzzy look to it and is soft to stand on. If I had to do it over, I would not have added the extra color wool. It was kind of hard to guess what the rug was going to look like. From a distance it doesn't look too bad. The size is 1.5'x2.5', not very big, but that was all the navy/red wool I had.
You can make chair cushions with this technique, rugs and hot pads to use in the kitchen. The size depends on how much wool you have and what you are making.
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BUTTERCUP IS MAD!
When Buttercup found out that I made a small rug for Sherri's doll house, she would not talk to me.
All she has for a rug is a worn out doily!
So I went to work on a colorful area rug for her. I choose matching colors of her furniture that had some dynamic patterns to them.
I wove it on my small metal pot holder loom. It matches well
and she can place it anywhere in her 'room'.
Buttercup is soooo happy, she jumping on the bed!
(sorry for the blurry pictures. Not sure what went wrong there. Must be operator error!)
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Thanks for visiting,
Cinder
