A fellow Townsend Artisan Guild member approached me to weave a rug for their bathroom.  It had to include colors to match the decor and, of course, be suitable for a bathroom.  The latter dictated that cotton be used in warp and weft with appropriate yarn thickness for strength and good wear and tear.  I was able to get 100% US sourced cotton for warp and weft, with the weft yarn trebled to give it a nice thick weft.

The color challenge was met by using a variegated yarn and two other yarns that matched colors in the first.  This gave the rug a random color mix with the predominant colors coming from the plain yarns and the other colors popping up based on the length of the color pattern.  All three yarns were plyed together on my Ashford traditional wheel.  Conveniently one bobbin full of finished yarn wound neatly on to the ski-shuttle.

The plyed weft yarn formed patterns and ‘super-patterns’ as a consequence of the amount of twist, the length of the variegated pattern and the width of the rug.  The floating selvedge was three warp threads together for strength with heavy weights at the back of the loom and there was two inches of plain tabby weave using the warp yarn to form the end binding.  Once cut off this was folded over twice and hand sewn to the first colored weft shot.

After finishing, the rug was hand washed and dried flat.  I suspect it would handle a washing machine wash but I will wait until I have another rug to test that theory.

The technique of plying the colors could be used in a multitude of ways and in a huge range of color combinations. The next rug I am weaving will feature stripes of plain with equally sized stripes of the ‘random’.  Meanwhile the first rug is now sitting on a bathroom floor in Townsend where I think it should do sterling service for many years to come.