Weaving - I love it!

Winter is the perfect time to find a hobby or craft that keeps you productive, warm, and entertained.  I found mine.  It has kept me pretty busy.. so busy that it has kept me from blogging much since Thanksgiving, but that being said, I have turned out 8 rugs since then and love to weave!

My friend Shari has a big floor loom and I fell in love with it when I saw it.  She makes beautiful rugs.. mostly fuzzy ones from carpet warp and they turn out so nice that I wanted to do it too.  She graciously helped me find a loom, advised me on type, helped train me to use it, gave me my first cone of warp thread and a training video, and has been so supportive.  I thought she deserved credit for that!  She has an Etsy shop called Creations Looming and you can see some of her work here:  http://www.etsy.com/shop/Creationslooming?ref=ss_profile   Now you see why I fell in love with her art. 

I have always been someone who loves threads and fabrics.  I used to sew a lot and still have a sewing room set up in the basement with a large fabric and yarn stash, especially since my mother-in-law left me a very large inventory of fabric and yarn.  So weaving looked ideal to me!

It took me a little while to get Mike on board.  A floor loom suitable for making rugs is big.. almost the size of a small piano, and it is pretty expensive if you buy it new... somewhere in the range of a few thousand dollars.  Pretty steep for us and I am sure he did not see the practical application for this new toy I wanted.  I don't blame him but I had to wear him down.  I had to make enough money to afford getting into this new hobby so while I was searching for the right used floor loom, I sold almost all my Silpada Sterling Silver jewelry collection on ebay.  I really needed to be able to buy what I needed with my own money.. such is the dilemma of a woman who has no real income to call her own... it was a pride thing.

I spent a lot of time on Craigslist and eBay searching for a loom.  There were a few that came up within a reasonable distance but they were either way more than I wanted to spend or not quite the right type of loom.  I networked with other women who weave in addition to Shari and then a loom DROPPED IN MY LAP!  I knew it was meant to be when 2 or 3 different people sent me an email letting me know there was a LeClerc floor loom 4 harness, 6 treadle for sale in Waukee.  I was ecstatic and went to see the loom.  It had belonged to a lady who has been gone for many years and her husband, being elderly now had to move from his home to assisted living.  He wanted someone to have the loom that would love it and I promised!!  I did not spend much at all!

We had to figure out how to then get it out of his basement.  Mike had to practically take it apart to get the pieces through the doorways and into the minivan but he did it while I prayed we would remember how to put it back together.  He did a fabulous job of moving it to our living room.. close to the rest of the family and close to the kitchen, since I always have some project going in there too.

When we got it home and all the pieces figured out.. and the instruction book out.. I discovered that it had never even been used!  There were some critical pieces of it still in the box and never touched.  Being about 30 years old, it had waited this long for someone to use it.  So the learning process came.  I watched countless videos and read books.  I visited my friend Shari to see hers in action again and I slowly figured out how to "warp" it and how to weave.

Here it is warped with 140 threads, each about 10 yards long and strung through little "eyes" in the beater and the heddles behind it.. then they are wrapped snugly around a round beam in the back so they can progress through the loom.  There is a run in progress on this one.

To warp 140 threads that are each 10 yards long, there is quite an elaborate process to be followed or strings would knot everywhere (that kind of happened the first time I tried).  It requires a "warp board".  Here is a picture of Shari's and then Mike made me a warping station in the basement fashioned after hers.  He is turning out to be quite the woodworker.  :)

My "warp board" is attached to the beams in the unfinished basement in an unfinished closet.  I love it in there.  I couldn't have picked a quieter place to count and wrap a bunch of string.  Mike pounded those dowels in the boards and then built a thread stand so I could warp up to 6 colors at one time without tangling them.  I have a hook to the left of my warp board that holds my pattern.

So now I make rugs.  I intend to make a LOT of rugs.  I have to buy the warp string and put my time into it.  One rug takes me several hours of work but I love how they are turning out.  The first one was not a pretty or as well done as the subsequent ones but Journey snagged it up quickly, saying it was her colors and she put it outside her bedroom door in the hallway, hanging a sign on her door that says "Please wipe your feet".

Journey's rug.  Greens, blues, and pinks.. made with fabric from mother in law's stash.

I made this rug in browns and neutrals for in front of my fireplace.  I love it there.

This rug is about 20" X 30" in greens.  $32

Pretty rug in reds and browns.  20" X 27".  $33

20" X 32" in reds and brown stripes.  $35

20" X 32" - stripes of brown/olive with dark brown, red, and beige.  $35

Variegated browns, beige, reds.  20" X 32".  $35

21" X 40 ".  Variegated beige with blue and red accent colors.  $40

I am pretty excited about my rugs.  I will be giving some for gifts and putting the rest up for sale.  My mother has several of them in her antique shop in Valley Junction now to see if they sell there.  Antique-lovers love the rustic look of handwoven rugs and they are not too common to find.  I also intend to do some vendor events with my rugs in the months to come.  I will need an inventory for that.  But mostly I just need to make money to continue to buy more warp threads and try different mediums for the weft.

I am excited to make some denim rugs!  I know they are popular and I wouldn't mind having a few of them myself!  I have asked family and friends to save old worn out jeans and denim clothes for me.  The wonderful thing about re-purposing into rugs is that even the stained and ripped worn out clothes are good for rugs!  I thought about experimenting with terry cloth towels, sheets, t-shirts, and fleece too!  Imagine all the color combinations and possibilities for someone who loves textiles like I do!

Mike is on board now.  He has been working hard to keep my expenses down by making me shuttles and the warp room you saw in the picture.  He built me two different kinds of shuttles and I love them!  He just has to see a picture and get the concept and then off to work he goes.  Gotta love a hand man!  Now I am working on getting him to envision and build a cheese press.

So, if you are interested in rugs, I take special orders or have those above for sale.  OR if you have some old clothes/sheets/t-shirts/towels laying around that you are going to throw out, consider sending them this way and let someone, someday, walk on them.