Two rugs: one is just plain classy, the other is straight up sassy.

"Eleanor," hand-dyed, hand-woven wool rug, 3.75'x5'

Hello lovely people.

So, do you want to hear something pretty cool?

I AM DONE WITH FINALS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I love school as well as the challenge of getting everything together for finals week, but I seriously love that I can sleep again.

I managed to weave two large rugs this past semester...somehow, and in some way, I managed it.  I feel like the Weaving Wonder Woman...I think I need a t-shirt depicting such.  I'm a fibers student, so I can just screen print one, right?

Anyway, the above image is of "Eleanor," one of my latest pieces.  I have been working on her since the beginning of the semester.  I was presented with a few challenges, namely weaving the rug in three separate panels that I needed to stitch together.  Then I ran into the issue of making a fancy rug finish on the top and bottom borders.  Normally, I make a starting and finishing border on the rug while on the loom, but when weaving a rug in three separate panels, it is extremely difficult to match up them up exactly.  As a result, I had to pull all of the borders out to make the panels even and find a rug finish to do all of the way across.  I researched quite a few different methods but found the Maori edge to be an ideal fit for this piece.  Below are a couple of images of what that process looked like.

Making a Maori edge, detail

Making a Maori edge, detail

It's a process in which you basically weave the warp ends (the white strings that run the vertical length of the rug) into themselves, and then stitch the tails up inside of the rug.  You start on one side and work your way across and end up with a tail on one side.  I made the tail into a little braided tassel, and I did the same on the other side but going the opposite direction; that way, I made two sweet little tassels in the opposite corners.  

"Sassafrass," hand-dyed, hand-woven cotton muslin rug (rag rug), 3'x5'

My second rug, "Sassafrass," was kind of done in a blur (you can see it in the image above).  I was running low on time, but I was determined to finish it.  It was the absolute sassiest rug that I have ever woven (hence the name).  I decided that I wanted to work with cotton muslin again as it had been an entire year since I had last worked with it.  This type of rug is called a "rag rug," but I have a really hard time bringing myself to call it that.  I feel like the word "rag" just kind of underrates the rug; so much work goes into preparing the cotton muslin that they are hardly rags at all!  

The two images below show a bit of the dye process of the cotton muslin.  First, I calculate how much material I will use, and then I take a bolt of cotton muslin and tear off as many yards as is needed  (in this instance, I needed to dye 30 yards of fabric!).  In this particular rug, I decided that I wanted to use colors in a color bridge.  A color bridge is a dye process in which you make a concentrated stock solution of two separate colors and mix them with each other, from opposite ends of a spectrum all the way to the other end, diluting the solutions as you go.  For this color bridge, I did four sets of six color changes, giving me 24 different colors in the end.  I used variations of a teal/blue color and a red/orange color, and they mixed in the middle to make some pretty sweet neutral grays and browns.  

Dying cotton muslin for a rug, using a plunger to agitate the dye; this plunger has never been used for anything other than agitating dye, rest assured...

Dyed cotton muslin yardage

Ready to weave after ripping all of those strips...whew!

After all of my yardage is happy and dyed, I rip each yard into 1/4" strips that I can weave with.  It sounds like a lot of work, and truly, it is.  Not to mention, weaving with cotton muslin is difficult because when you rip the muslin, you make all sorts of little stringy ends that catch onto everything.  This rug was so sassy because it seemed that every five seconds I was trying to untangle it from the shuttle, the loom, or itself.  But it was well worth it in the end!

I wanted to create a rug using the shaft switching technique where I create this "brick" pattern, or color breaks in different sections of each stripe going across with all of the orange tones on one side and all of the blue tones on the other.  The result, I am happy to say, is fantastic.  I love it.  And I keep getting comments that when turned on either side, the color breaks read as a cityscape (see the image below...).

It does look like a cityscape, doesn't it?

When I complete a piece, I try to find an appropriate name for it.  I've taken to giving a lot of my fiber pieces actual names, as I see each piece as having its own personality.  Plus, how cool would it be to purchase a rug and tell your spouse, "honey, I just bought Sassafrass!  He's going to look great in our living room!"  Hilarious.  And, my names are usually silly enough or endearing enough that they put a smile on the viewer's face.  It's much more interesting than naming it, "Striped rug #3," or "Boring McBorington of Boresville."  "Eleanor" got her name because she is just plain classy, while "Sassafrass" got his name because he's straight up sassy (intentional rhyme work, right there; you're welcome).    

And after all of that, lovely people, I bid you ado.  As always, thanks for reading, and have yourselves a spectacular sort of day.