Rug Warp Done

I finished weaving the last part of the rug warp. Instead of weaving one or two more rugs I wove material to make tote bags. I am going to start making tote bags along with my rugs. I have asked a few people to save plastic bags for me. I figured that would be a good thing to make bags out of plastic bags. Why do I have visions of me digging through the recycle bins at store to retrieve more plastic bags? I wish that I could get my hands on some Sendick's bags from Milwaukee. They are red and very heavy. My next warp will be black and grey. All of the white bags that I have will go well with that, so with Kohl's grey bags.

While this may not have all of the creativity that I crave I must weave to sell. I am going to make it fun at least. Some of them i will line and put pockets in. Maybe I will find some cool material for the lining. There are some beautiful batiks out there.

How to weave a rag rug

Most of the rugs that I weave are woven with byproducts of the textile industry. I do weave some out of material that I cut. I like the look of Madras plaid after it is woven into a rug.

These are the steps that I take in weaving a rug:

First I wash the material. Here is what it looks like before I start cutting:

Then I cut one end off at a 45 degree angle so that I can make a large bias tube out of the material. I take the selvedges of the material and line them up. Since one end of the material was cut at an angle you have to pull one end up. You can see the end of the material is now a bias.

I sew the selvedges together with a straight stitch.

I take the piece that I cut off of the end and sew on the opposite end so that I have a complete bias tube. (Sorry, no picture)

A bias tube of this length would be too hard to handle in the rag cutter so I cut it into sections of about 30" each.

Then I take each section and feed it into the rag cutter, this makes things go very quickly. You do have to be careful to not allow the material that is under the rag cutter from getting cut.

After I finish cutting a bias section I have enough to fill one of my rag shuttles. Coming off of the rag cutter you will have a nice little pile like this:
and yes, I do realize that I need to vacuum.

Here is the rug that I am working on with a piece of the original material:I made this warp to be used with several different wefts. I do wish that with this filler I had left the natural warp out.