Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Rugs

Just before Christmas Break, the students learned to weave rag rugs. They turned out so nice that I decided to give rug weaving another go. I did a semester when I was at school focused on boundweave rugs. They are a weft faced cloth which means that the warp threads are completely covered by yarn that you have on your shuttle.
Here is where notes come in handy. It has been a number of years sonce I had woven a boundweave rug. My old school notes were in my office at school because I sometimes find them handy to refer to when a student has a question. My teacher insisted that we keep good notes. She checked through to make sure that all the handouts that she had given us were in the notebook, all the record sheets for everything that we had woven were properly filled out, and all of the things that we had discussed in class were written out. And legible! Our note books were part of our marks. As were things like "studio practice". Basically, did we clean up after ourselves. Oh, for the good old days!
In any case, I was a bit uncertain of how to go about getting the particular pattern that I wanted. Because my notes were at school, I looked through my text books, weaving magazines, and other weaving books. I tried google. I tried to just figure it out. No luck.
I finally gave up and went down to get my notes. And there was the answer that I was looking for. In pen on lined paper. The notes that my teacher insisted that we take. Oh, how we grumbled at the time about getting out notebooks ready for marking. But now, I say "Thank you Susan" as I have said thank you many many times because my notes were so good. Because she insisted that we keep a good not book. Because you never know when you will have to refer back to something. Because it might be 10 years since you last wove a boundweave rug.
Bill likes to throw down a rag to catch any drops of water that may fall on the floor while doing dishes. But it never got picked up. Drove me nuts. So here is the little rug that I wove to go in front of the kitchen sink. It is about 38 inches long and 14 inches wide. Just wide enough to stand on but not so wide that it will get in the way of people trying to get through the narrow space between the sink and the table.


I have another one on the loom, but blogger won't let me upload a photo of it. Maybe it is offended by WIP's. Maybe I'll try again later. Maybe I'll go weave now instead.

5 comments:

tanita✿davis said...

WOW.
I am admittedly baffled by the concept of weaving; it always just seems like ...magic.

And this is a gorgeous little rug just for kitchen spills! How very classy!

Liz said...

Susan was a fantastic teacher. I learned more than just weaving from that smart lady! i too am very thankful that she was so insistant on keeping meticulous notes.

Julia said...

Jackie, that new kitchen rug has the same pattern as the brown weaved table runner you gave me for a Christmas gift when you were a student. Do you remember that one?
JBtribi

Julia said...

Jackie, do you remember that you gave me a brown table runner with the same pattern for Christmas when you were a student?. It's about the same width but is quite long.

I hate water on the floor when doing dishes and your little new rug will take care of your problem and brighten your kitchen. Mamoo

David T. Macknet said...

I suppose this is why I bake and knit, rather than weave: I don't particularly need to have a recipe / pattern, because I don't really try to duplicate many things.

Weaving, though ... T's right: it's a mysterious thing, requiring good notes. :)