Bathroom Rag Rug: Ready To Start?

My husband Dan has a big indoor construction project going on, It invades my loom room, so to keep dust off my Glimakra and the lap robe I'm weaving, I covered it with old sheets. For the time being, working on the lap robe is on hold. I've got spinning and dyeing projects in the works too, but I really want to be weaving too. Thankfully, I think I'm ready to get started on the project I have planned for my table loom - the t-shirt rag rug. 

In hunting back through my blog posts, I see I haven't mentioned this project since last May, "The Hold-Up is Brown T-Shirts." After initially finding half-a-dozen brown t-shirts at the thrift store, I've found very few that didn't have side seams. I estimated I need ten extra-large. I check the thrift stores when I'm out and have added several more to the pile. I think I now have enough to get started!

Pictures of how to make t-shirt yarn in this post.

I've never woven a rag rug before, so I wondered about sett. It can't be calculated the same as plain weave or twill, because the weft is so much thicker than the warp. Rag Rug Handbook by Janet Meany and Paula Pfaff tells me that sett for rag rugs is commonly 10, 12, or 15 ends per inch. My 10-dent reed is my longest, almost the full 24-inch width of my table loom. So I decided it was a good choice. For length, I'm aiming for 36 inches plus fringe.

Warp color. Hmm. I have natural color cotton warp in my stash, but the t-shirt yarn colors are so dark and bright. I'm considering buying brown rug warp because I think the natural would tend to mute the visual affect of the colors. 

Quick calculations for a 23" by 36" rug with fringe suggest I'd need 460 yards to warp the loom. A half-pound tube of brown rug warp contains 840 yards, so one tube will do. While I wait on that, I'll finish up the last few t-shirts for the weft yarn. Hopefully, weaving will commence next week. 

Bathroom Rag Rug: Ready To Start?

 © Aug 2024 by Leigh at Leigh's Fiber Journal

Related posts:

Bathroom Rag Rug: Planning

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

Bathroom Rag Rug: How T-shirt Collecting Is Coming Along

Bathroom Rag Rug: The Hold-Up is Brown T-Shirts