Bathroom Rag Rug: Planning

It's been on my mind for awhile, now, to weave a bathroom rug. I did the bath mats first, and then my Su-chan cap several weeks ago. I've been slow to get started on the rug, however. My excuses have been my big mending pile, and my sort and purge project in preparation to setting up my big loom. But the real reason is because I've been terribly indecisive about finding a pattern I like. 

I've gave myself a couple of parameters to work with:

• rag rug with t-shirt yarn (because old t-shirts are readily available for rags)
• crackle structure (which I'm still fascinated with)
• something reminiscent of stained glass (because of our bathroom window)

And of course. it will be a small size rug because of the size of my table loom. But I have a small size bathroom, so no problem. 

After weeks of looking at so many ideas that I've lost track, I finally settled on a pattern from Mary Meigs Atwater's Recipe Book: Patterns for Handweavers. This is a collection of weaving patterns from her many years as editor of Shuttle-Craft Bulletin. The Recipe Book was out of print for many years, but has been made available on a thumb drive in PDF format by the Mary Meigs Atwater Weavers Guild. It's very reasonably priced ($20) and includes extras such as fabric photos and wif files. The guild also hosts copies of the original Shuttle-Craft Bulletins, available as free PDF downloads here. 

The rug I'm interested in is from the Recipe Book, Series II No. 4.

"Recipe for a rug. A pattern in crackle-weave."

The yarns:

The threading (read right to left):

The tie-up:

The treadling:

Besides liking the look of it, I was happy to see that rags are mentioned as a possibility for pattern weft. So I know it will work with t-shirt yarn. I also found it interesting that the tabby is the same as the pattern weft. She talks about doubling the pattern weft for a heavy rug, and it's got me wondering how to handle my t-shirt rags. Maybe make some for pattern that are wider than the ones to use for tabby? More decisions. But at least I'm getting closer to getting started. 

Bathroom Rag Rug: Planning © March 2024

by Leigh at Leigh's Fiber Journal

Related post:

Bathroom Rag Rug: How Many T-shirts Will I Need?