The Rug.. Final Product

I am so pleased with how this turned out.  It took me about 7 hours to complete the weaving.

Now to finish the hem and the fringe and it's complete!

Be Bold in your Designs.

peace&love

Rebecca

The Rug.. Beaming the Warp.. Starting the Weave

Beaming the warp.

Love seeing the pattern roll by.

And the weaving begins.  

As stated earlier.. this rug is warp faced.  Warp faced is where the warp yarns doubled, so there is twice the amount of warp to weft.  Since I had such an intricate dye pattern on the warp, that was the only thing I wanted to show.

A plain weave was all I needed to show off this beautiful chevron Ikat pattern.  

Ikat occurs when there is a pattern on the warp yarns and when they are wound up, the warp yarns shift slightly.  A unique, random, beautiful pattern occurs right before your eyes.

Stay tuned for the completion of the rug.. hopefully later this week!

Be Bold in your Designs.

peace&love

Rebecca

be Merry and Bright

My favorite time of the year.  The trees, the lights and the holiday cheer!

Decorating for the holidays is one of my favorite things.  I have found that choosing a color scheme really helps to unify and bring your decorations to the next level.

 My color theme for this year is gold, snow and natural woody elements.
Classy sparkly meets raw natural.

 I love mixing shapes, sizes, textures and colors.  The variety creates depth and always gives you something to look at.

It's also fun to take common objects and use them in new ways, but more on that later..

Have fun decorating this holiday season!

Be Bold in your Designs.

peace&love

Rebecca

The Rug.. Threading the Heddles

Everything takes longer on a bigger loom...especially threading the heddles.

Now to wind it up and I'm finally ready to start weaving. 

peace&love

Rebecca 

The Rug.. Made it to the Big Loom

With all the preparations done, I headed to the loom.  The loom is 42" long and my rug will fill up 38".  The rug will be warped faced, meaning only the warp threads show, so I doubled up and tripled up the threads per dent.  My rug is 15 epi (ends per inch) and there are 6 dents per inch in the reed.  So I threaded 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2.  

The next step is to thread the heddles, but you and I will have to wait until Monday for that.

Be Bold in your Designs.

peace&love

Rebecca

The Rug.. A Touch of Blue

With the final color added, the yarns are ready for the loom.

So close.. It's the start of the end.  All the measurements, calculation and preparations have paid off.  I will pick up speed on Wednesday and in no time the rug will be complete.

peace&love

Rebecca

The Rug.. Chevron Dyeing

Yesterday I dyed the warp yarns.  All my preparations paid off and everything went very smoothly, but since I had about 5 dye lots, it still took a good 6 hours.  Here is the process.

I started off with 3 dyes.. taupe, old ivory and dark gray.  When I ordered these dyes they did not have color samples so I just hoped for the best.

The recipe called for white vinegar to act as a mordant, what attaches the dye to the yarn.

For the dye to work best, the dye needed to be simmering.  I used this large aluminum, old camping pot (worked great).

After choosing and tying off each section that needed to be dyed, I dipped each end in the simmering dye.  

It only stayed in for a couple of minutes.  I could see the yarns soaking up the dye.

The first batch.  The last yarns added to the dye bath ended up lighter since the earlier yarns had soaked up all the dye.

The first dye lot.. taupe, all laid out.. everything is going to plan.

Re tying for the the next color.

The second color is a less concentrated taupe.

Re tying for the third color.

Third color, Old Ivory.. all laid out.

I had one more color, a dark grey, that tied everything together.  Stay tuned for the start of the weaving process.

Be Bold in your Designs.

peace&love

Rebecca