Setting up the foundation

Both my daughter and son had recently given me old jeans that were no longer fit for service. I also had a pair that needed to come out of circulation and I had some pieces of an old pair of my husband’s jeans from a previous project. I decided I wanted to try using denim as the warp on a new rug. Deconstructing the jeans and cutting them into strips to use as the warp was much more difficult than I expected. There is a reason jeans are known for their ruggedness! When I extracted as many strips as I could, I was still a little bit short, so I used some black t-shirt strips for each side. Where the jean strips were joined, sometimes there was a fairly large “lump” but I think that just adds to the interesting texture of the final work.

Playing with colors

I love that people now seek out and save me plastic of unique colors. For this project a friend had brought me an iridescent green saran type plastic. The minute I saw it I knew I wanted to use it with denim. I also had several other unique plastics – a silver Nordstrom’s dress bag, and some green polka dotted bags from ThredUp. These would work with the iridescent green. I also had a lot of white shipping bags and clear bags. I had my palette. Now I just needed a design.

The challenge is I never really know how far a given plastic will “go” on the loom. And when I can’t get more in a given color I have to figure out how to space the plastic out in the most attractive way.

I had almost a limitless supply of white and clear so had planned to use those to “fill the gaps” in the design. But then three blue bags came into my possession. I knew these would work with the current color scheme. Once again, I had to do some planning and calculations.

I added the blue on either side of the line of symmetry and discovered I would have enough to do four stripes total.

Now I could fill in with white and some of the left over light green, which I calculated I had enough of to use with the white to make four stripes.

The completed rug off the loom. Working so many different sections at once means I have a lot of finish work to do once the piece is off the loom.

Last post I showed this soap dish in progress. I completed it and gave it to my friend. She was, as I expected, very please to have it. It is the perfect colors for her kitchen.

Another commission: This time a rug in blue and burgundy. The weft (the plastic) is clear, which looks white when woven. I’ve done several rugs with a striped warp and a solid weft. I’m surprised the stripes don’t show more in this piece but I think it is because the value of the two colors is very similar. I hope the friend who commissioned it isn’t disappointed. There is still an element of surprise for every piece I make!