With left over yarn from the rug commission and the eventual need for a bathroom rug for the studio bathroom I decided to set up and weave a custom rug. The method involved plying three cotton yarns together (two single color and one variegated) to give a ‘random’ patterned thick yarn for the weft. The warp is linen.

To depict the Oak & Fern theme I did stripes of the original brown/tan mix with new yarn in shades of green.

The rug was woven on ‘Pete’, the loom from Townsend that I renovated. It has a nice strong frame so I was able to keep the warp pretty tight and beat the weft heavily to be mostly weft faced. The hem on one rug (I had enough yarn for the planned bathroom rug and a smaller one) was woven with the linen warp yarn, the other I just used a single of the weft cotton. Both look fine.

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To keep the joins relatively straight I unwound about 6 inches of each yarn and took each individual yarn out of the weave at about 2 inch intervals then brought the new yarn/color in in reverse order. I then used a darning needle and took each end through the weft following a warp yarn. After darning in all the ends I wet finished in the washing machine and dried them flat.

In the photos above (L-R); the rugs off the loom, hemmed and darning in joins, finished rugs.

Heavy duty cotton and linen should mean we get years of use and easy washing. Time will tell and now all I have to do is finish the bathroom build!