Beautiful Hand Woven Rugs
Beautiful Hand Woven Rugs
Beautiful Hand Woven Rugs
Three Free Rug Patterns Plus Tips and Tricks for Successful Rug Weaving
TM
Beautiful Hand Woven Rugs: Three Free Rug Patterns Plus Tips and Tricks for Successful Rug Weaving
TM
A Boundweave Rug
by Tom Knisely
Weavers who like weaving (as opposed to counting heddles, drafting, planning, ordering yarn, and warping) will love boundweave. Every part of the project goes quickly except the weaving. Its like taking a month for a vacation instead of a weekendyou can savor instead of rush.
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Beautiful Hand Woven Rugs: Three Free Rug Patterns Plus Tips and Tricks for Successful Rug Weaving
TM
M
1 2 3
a
any of us follow daily schedules that leave very little time for weaving, so we look for projects we can complete in the little free time we have. Here is a different way to look at time. Warping the loom for weft-faced rugs is very fast. Its
the weaving that takes time, but its the weaving that brings great satisfaction. Whenever you have a moment, you can spend it joyfully at your loom (no thinking or planning, only the rhythm of weaving, the feel of the weft, watching the growing pattern).
Wind a warp of 212 ends 2 14 yd long and prepare the loom using your preferred method following Figure 1. (See Project at a Glance on the next page for yarn information.) Centering for a width of 26 38", sley 3 ends in the rst dent, *skip a dent, then sley 2 ends in the next dent. Repeat from *, ending with 3 ends in the last dent. (The ends in each dent go through a single heddle.) The oating selvedges are wound separately and not beamed: Wind 8 ends 4 yd long. Place 4 ends in a separate dent on each side and weight heavily (I use C-clamps). For each of the four weft colors, wind 2 strands together on the shuttle (wind from two 12 lb tubes). Allowing 12" for fringe, spread the warp with scrap yarn. Beginning and ending with 4 picks plain weave in Dark Brown, weave the rug following Figure 1, bubbling the weft as shown in Photo a and using a temple (stretcher) to prevent draw-in (see Tips). End with scrap yarn to prevent raveling. Remove the rug from the loom. Prepare a Damascus edge on both ends of the rug as in Photo b, removing scrap yarn as you go. Then prepare a twisted fringe of 4 ends/fringe; secure with an overhand knot. Block and press the rug with hot iron and damp pressing cloth.
contd.
/ /
plain weave
4x 4x 4x 4x 4x 4x 4x 4x 4x
Photo a. Bubbling the weft to accommodate weft take-up. Photo b. Working a Damascus edge before twisting.
4x 4x 4x 4x 4x
TIP: For rm, smooth selvedges and minimal draw-in, use a temple (or stretcher) for weft-faced rugs. Choose a metal temple with slanted teeth that can accommodate a rugs thickness.
4x 4x 4x 4x 4x 4x 4x
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Beautiful Hand Woven Rugs: Three Free Rug Patterns Plus Tips and Tricks for Successful Rug Weaving
TM
PROJECT at-a-glance
Weave structure for rug Weft-faced twill. Equipment 4-shaft loom, 27" weaving width; 8-dent reed; 4 ski or rug shuttles; metal temple. Yarns Warp: 8/5 linen rug warp, used doubled (500 yd/lb, The Mannings), natural, 513 yd. Weft: 3-ply rug wool used doubled (578 yd/lb, The Mannings), Dark Brown, 380 yd; Brick, 975 yd; Brown and Sable, 325 yd each. (This yarn comes on 1 2 lb tubes.) Warp order and length 212 ends 214 yd long (allows 4" for take-up, 35" for loom waste; loom waste includes fringe). 8 ends 4 yd long for oating selvedges. Setts Warp: 4 doubled epi (1 doubled end alternating with an empty dent in an 8-dent reed; rst and last ends are tripled, oating selvedges are quadrupled). Weft: 28 doubled ppi. Dimensions Width in the reed: 2638". Woven length (measured under tension on the loom): 42". Finished size after blocking: 2412" 40" plus 6" fringe.
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Beautiful Hand Woven Rugs: Three Free Rug Patterns Plus Tips and Tricks for Successful Rug Weaving
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From Handwoven, September/October 2008; pp. 3436. 5 Beautiful Hand Woven Rugs from Weaving Today
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Beautiful Hand Woven Rugs: Three Free Rug Patterns Plus Tips and Tricks for Successful Rug Weaving
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eaving is a mostly solitary occupation, but we all use the ideas, materials, and techniques of weavers from around the world and across time. Indigo is one of the oldest dyestuffs, found in fabrics from uncounted cultures. The batik fabric that is cut into strips for the weft in this rug was dyed with indigo (batik is a dye technique used in many parts of Africa and Asia). When we weave, we are connected to weavers, spinners, and dyers everywhere. The advantage to using a batik fabric for a rag weft is that in batiks, the dye is evenly distributed on both sides of the cloth. Since there is no wrong side, you do not have to worry about placing a batik rag weft carefully in the shed. Commercial batiks like the one used in this rug are available from quilting and fabric stores.
1. Draft
15x
3 4 3 1 3 4 3
Resources
Krook, Inge. From Rags to Riches. Handwoven, May/June, 1983, pp. 3237.
Double Binding
The weave structure, usually called double binding, probably originated in Sweden. It is a 2-block, complementary-weft weave, threaded differently but behaving just like taquet. In each block, one of two wefts appears on the face, the other on the back. The wefts can be the same or different colors; the colors are reversed on the back.
14x
4 2 1 2 2 1 2 3 4 3 1
1 2"
14x
3 4
3x
3 4 2 1 2
14x
2 2 3 4 3 1
7 8"
15x
3 4 3
///
1 2 3 4 5 6 4 4 4 3 3 3 2 2 2 1 1 1
///
4x 2x
strips
strips
* ///
///
/// ///
hem
2x
/// ///
the batik wherever navy is used here, your rug will have light windows framed in indigo batik.
8x
PROJECT at-a-glance
Weave structure Double binding, a complementary weft structure (variation of taquet). Equipment 4-shaft loom, 34" weaving width; 8-dent reed; 2 rag shuttles, 1 boat shuttle for hems. Yarns Warp: 8/4 cotton carpet warp (1,680 yd/lb, Maysville, Great Northern Weaving), royal blue, 1,494 yd. Weft: sheeting-weight fabric 44" wide: 6 yd dark batik for 251 yd of 78" strips (includes 2" strips used in hems); 312 yd light batik fabric for 115 yd of 78" strips; 1 12 yd solid dark navy fabric for 50 yd of 78" strips. 8/4 cotton carpet warp for hems, royal blue, used tripled, 90 yd.
1
11x 4x 6x 11x 8x
/// /// ///
Warp length 543 ends (includes 2 doubled oating selvedges) 234 yd long (allows 8" take-up, 38" loom waste). Stetts Warp: 16 epi (2/dent in an 8-dent reed). Weft: 10 ppi.
2x
* ///
///
/// ///
hem
2x
///
4x
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Beautiful Hand Woven Rugs: Three Free Rug Patterns Plus Tips and Tricks for Successful Rug Weaving
TM
1 2
Thread the loom following Figure 1 using your preferred warping method. Cut the fabric for the weft lengthwise into strips 78" wide. Trim off 38" from 21 yd of a 78" wide dark batik strip to make 12" strips for hems. Wind a bobbin with royal blue carpet warp and a rag shuttle with about 10 yd of the 12" strips. Alternating treadles 1 and 6, weave a few picks in scrap yarn to spread the warp. Then weave the hem with the tripled carpet warp (make three passes of the shuttle through the same shed, taking the weft around the oating selvedges to prevent unweaving) and the dark batik 12" strips as indicated in Figure 1. After completing the hem section, run a line of white glue along the rst 2 picks and allow the glue to dry. (The glued picks will be enclosed in the hem.) Wind the 78" strips of the dark batik fabric onto one rag shuttle and wind the other two colors onto the other rag shuttle as you need them. The two shuttles will alternate throughout. Weave the body of the rug
Beautiful Hand Woven Rugs from Weaving Today
following Figure 1, beating rmly. To secure each weft in place: Throw the shuttle, keep the shed open, and beat. Press the beater rmly against the fell to lock the weft in place as you open the shed for the next pick. This technique will make a tightly woven rug without a lot of wear and tear on you or your loom. The batik fabric is similar enough on both sides that you do not need to worry about keeping the right side up in the shedallow the fabric to twist as it goes in. End the rug with the second hem and spread glue on the last 2 picks as at the beginning.
3
7
Carefully cut the rug from the loom and machine zigzag raw edges. At each end: fold up the 8-pick section of tripled carpet warp and then fold again on the pick marked with an asterisk in the treadling. With an upholstery needle threaded with carpet warp, sew the start of the rug to the edge of the tripled rug warp by catching alternate warp threads from the hem and the start of the rug.
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Beautiful Hand Woven Rugs: Three Free Rug Patterns Plus Tips and Tricks for Successful Rug Weaving
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required, the number of shafts on your loom, the durability requirements of where the rug will go. Take a closer look at the examples. Which do you like best visually and texturally? Which of the samples that you tried in the workshop was most pleasurable to weave? Sometimes the best weaving we do in a sampler indicates what our bodies enjoy doing most. That is the place to begin. Most people acknowledge that color is very subjective. I would extend this subjective quality to weave structures. When you find a weave you really like doing, be grateful. That is when your best work generally happens. Work with it until you have nothing more to say.
Choosing a structure
How do you choose which of the rugs you admired in the workshop (or in Handwoven) to weave? You want to weave one of each! Practicality might dictate here: the amount of yarn you have in the number of colors
8 Beautiful Hand Woven Rugs from Weaving Today
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Beautiful Hand Woven Rugs: Three Free Rug Patterns Plus Tips and Tricks for Successful Rug Weaving
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Tapestr y-weave rug, 4' x 5' Clasped-hook slit wedge-weave rug, 4' x 6'
for what lies ahead as we discover more about how we work. As we learn more about ourselves and our process, the cloth only gets better. We may not end up taking the path we planned, but it will be a better path, more personal, with more integrity, depth, and interest. The cloth becomes usand we become the cloth. I began as a production rug weaver. Peter Collingwoods The Techniques of Rug Weaving had just come out and he spoke my language. He was a production rug weaverso naturally, that defined my path. He was caught up in shaft-switched rugsthat was for me too! I wove many shaft-switched rugs over the next three to four years, and then I found myself reflecting a bit on my process. It took Collingwood two to three days to weave a 3' 5' rug. It took me five days to weave a 32" 5" rug. When Id finish a rug, even though I had planned the design for the next one and had the colors already chosen, somehow I could not start the new one for several more days. It didnt just take loom time to weave a rug, it also took digesting or recovery time afterward. So I had to acknowledge that a rug did not
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Beautiful Hand Woven Rugs: Three Free Rug Patterns Plus Tips and Tricks for Successful Rug Weaving
TM
take me five days to weave, but maybe as many as ten. This fact shocked me. One of the benefits of shaftswitching was supposed to be that it was so quick! I was also becoming aware that even after these three or four years of weaving shaft-switched rugs, my designs for them were not improving much. Maybe shaft switching was not my technique. I started to wonder what would happen if I worked in other techniques, ones that took as long as my shaft-switching investment of ten days or even longer. Would there still be a gap between the end of one rug and the start of the next? The can of worms was open! After exploring a number of other techniques with fairly ordinary results, I discovered something while rereading The Techniques of Rug Weaving. I did not react the same way to all the techniques. Each one, as I read about it, captured my intellectual attention as
I tried to understand it. But some also made my fingers start to tingle with eagerness. More of me than just my mind became involved as I read about them. They seemed to be calling me. I now know that a technique in a sense chooses me, not the reverse. When one keeps hanging around my thoughts and does not go away, I need to try it. Ive spent at least several years working with some techniques before we are done with each other. The rugs seem to get better as I continue exploring, learning how to show off better the special nuances of the technique. They become part of its signature, and its foibles become its assets. Time working in the same technique is always well spent. It teaches me as I push it in newer directions, trying to get closer to the core of what it can really do. Look carefully for the parts of weaving that are trying to choose you.
handwovenmagazine.com
10 Beautiful Hand Woven Rugs from Weaving Today
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Beautiful Hand Woven Rugs: Three Free Rug Patterns Plus Tips and Tricks for Successful Rug Weaving
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From Handwoven, January/February 2006; pp. 5658. 11 Beautiful Hand Woven Rugs from Weaving Today
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Beautiful Hand Woven Rugs: Three Free Rug Patterns Plus Tips and Tricks for Successful Rug Weaving
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ur word rep comes from the Swedish term rip, which describes the horizontal ridges produced in a cloth with a very closely sett warp and a thick weft. In addition to a delightfully smooth ribbed texture, through the use of color rep can produce a richly patterned cloth on as few as four shafts. This rug is a great project for teaching a beginner the joys of warp rep. The structure of warp rep is plain weave. The pattern potential comes from the way colors are used in the warp. Two colors are threaded alternately on a pair of shafts. When one shaft is raised for a very thick weft and the other for a very thin weft, the color covering the thick weft shows on the face of the cloth. If the shaft order is reversed, the other color shows on the face. Four blocks can be woven on four shafts. Although they can be any contrasting colors, if we call them dark (D) and light (L): in Block A, shaft 1 is threaded D, shaft 3L; B = 2D, 4L; C = 3D, 1L; D = 4D, 2L. Since they share shafts, Block C always weaves
dark when A weaves light and vice versa; D weaves dark when B weaves light and vice versa. The two alternating colors can change across the warp, however (the light colors change in this rug), to increase design complexity.
PROJECT at-a-glance
Weave structure for rugs Warp rep. Equipment 4-shaft loom, 30" weaving width; 12-dent reed; 1 boat shuttle, 1 rug or ski shuttle. Yarns Warp: 8/4 cotton carpet warp (1,680 yd/lb), Forest Green, 1,302 yd (1225 oz); Gold, 378 yd (335 oz); KY Cardinal, 336 yd (315 oz); Burnt Orange and Copper, 252 yd (225 oz) each. Weft: 8/4 cotton carpet warp (1,680 yd/lb), Forest Green, 390 yd (334 oz). Mop cotton (420 yd/lb), dark green, 165 yd (1 lb, 10 oz) or 8 strands of 8/2 cotton, bundled (3,360 yd/lb), dark green, 1,320 yd before bundling (1/3 lb). Yarn sources 8/4 cotton carpet warp and mop cotton are available from The Mannings. Warp order and length 720 ends 312 yd long following Figure 2 (allows 15" for about 20% take-up and 37" for loom waste and sampling). Warp and weft spacing Warp: 24 epi (2/dent in a 12-dent reed). Width in the reed: 30". Weft: 6 ppi (3 thin, 3 thick). Woven length (measured under tension on the loom): 72". Finished dimensions Amounts produce one hemmed rug 30" 58" including hems.
12
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Beautiful Hand Woven Rugs: Three Free Rug Patterns Plus Tips and Tricks for Successful Rug Weaving
1. Draft for rug
3x 6x 6x 6x 6x 6x 6x 6x 6x 6x 6x 6x 6x 6x 6x 6x 2x 6x 6x 6x 6x 3x
TM
2x 12x 12x 12x 12x 12x 12x 12x 12x 12x 12x 12x 12x 12x 12x 12x 12x 12x 12x 12x
4 4 3 3 2 2 1 1
hem
21 " 2 4x 4x 4x 4x 4x 4x 3x 4x 4x 4x 4x 4x 4x 4x 4x 4x 4x 4x 4x 4x 4x 4x 21 " 2
= 2 strands 8/4 cotton = 1 strand 8/4 cotton = 4 strands mop cotton and 1 strand 8/4 cotton; see tip in Step 4.
A B C D A D C B A D C D A B C D A D C B A
hem
Wind a warp of 720 total ends 3 12 yd long following the color order in Figure 2. (This rug is warped from front to back. For specic warping instructions, see Weaving Resources at www .handwovenmagazine.com.) Wind the 12 Forest Green ends at each selvedge singly. Wind the 2 ends of alternating colors together, keeping them separate with a nger but placing them together in the cross. Tie the cross and several choke ties and chain the warp from the warping board. Sley 2 ends/dent in a 12-dent reed, centering for 30". Thread the loom following Figure 1 and tie the warp onto the back apron rod. Prop open a plain-weave shed to help the dense warp threads pass through the heddles and beam the warp with very rm and even tension, packing the layers with sticks or heavy paper. Tie the warp onto the front apron rod and weave a header with scrap yarn. Wind a bobbin of 8/4 cotton carpet warp for the thin weft. Prepare the thick weft by winding 4 strands of dark green mop cotton together on a ski or rug shuttle. Because the required amount of weft uses only two spools of the purchased mop cotton, wind a ball the size of an orange from each spool. Drop each of the balls into a container and place the 2 spools on a spool rack or cone stand or in containers to wind the 4 strands together. Begin weaving the rug with 2 12" plain weave for the hem section, placing 2 strands of Forest Green 8/4 cotton in each shed. Then weave the body of the rug for 68" following the treadling in Figure 1. Beat rmly and maintain tight warp
tension. Place the weft straight across in the shed (the warp does all the bending; an angled weft will prevent the rug from lying at). For the thick weft, open the shed, throw the shuttle, and beat. With the shed still open, take the weft back toward the shafts with one hand as you place the index nger of your other hand into the shed where the yarn turns at the selvedge and snug it in. Then bring the weft back to horizontal and beat again. Change the shed and beat a third time. When you run out of thick weft, taper the new and old ends by cutting the 4 strands at different points 1 122" from the ends; then overlap them in the shed. Heres a tip. Youll achieve a neater selvedge if you also place the thin weft in the shed with the thick weft. For example, weave a thick pick, adjust the selvedge as described above, and then place the thin weft in the same shed. Change the shed and weave the thin weft alone. End with 2 12" plain weave with 2 strands of 8/4 cotton for the second hem section as at the beginning and then weave several picks with scrap yarn to secure the edge of the rug. Remove the fabric from the loom.
4
13
Machine stitch across the ends of both hem sections. Trim off the warp and scrap yarn just outside the machine stitching. Turn the ends under twice and sew the hems by machine or by hand. To prevent sliding on hardwood or tile ooring, purchase a rubber mat to place under the rug and cut the mat so that it is slightly smaller than the dimensions of the rug.
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