Recent Rag Rugs

Rugmaking has become one of my great passions these last few years. These are a few of the rugs I made this last winter.  As always, you can click on these photos to enlarge them.

Rag rug in rainbow colors

This rug has the colors of the rainbow -- ROY G. BIV (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.) It's a little weak in the orange and yellow section since I'm saving everything I have in those colors for kitchen rugs I'm making for my daughter-in-law next.

I experimented with several new-to-me techniques in this rug.  I used two narrow strips of fabric as the "yarn" throughout the rug, rather than a single strip like usual. This made the transitions from one color to the next easy.

Since the strips were an inch or less in width, I didn't attempt to fold in the raw edges as I usually do, so the rug surface is more thready than what I usually prefer.  I also joined the fabric strips by slit-knots, rather than sewing them together as usual. I don't think knotting is any faster than sewing (with the machine.) But I do see that it's easy to carry my rug-making with me whenever I leave the house, if I don't need sewed-together strips.

The two rugs at left, below, were made in my customary style -- fabric strips sewed together and raw edges turned in. These rugs reside on my daughter's back porch. The rug at right, below, includes remnants from the other two.  It was photographed in different light, but actually, it's a mate, more or less.  I gave it to my daughter as well.

I'm not sure why I was so determined to get rid of every scrap of those fabrics, but it seemed logical at the time. To me, these three rugs will always remind me of my husband's sinus surgery as that was the period of time in which I made them. I don't mean that they are sad rugs. My husband's sinus surgery was a great success, and he's feeling better than he has for a long time.

Two of a set of rag rugs

The third rug of the set