For the love of rag rugs

I’ve always wanted to make rag rugs and my lovely little 15” Weavemaster is, as you can imagine, just not big enough! So, when I got the chance of buying a larger loom from that well known auction site, I just couldn’t resist and the fact that it was located only a couple of miles away did it for me!

Although it was a bit scruffy I was quite pleased with my purchase. It has a weaving width of 45” – which is more than enough for weaving rag rugs on.

I soon discovered that using a counterbalance floor loom is a LOT different from using a table loom. The shafts must balance correctly for it to weave properly. After a little tweaking I got her up and running and warped ready for weaving my first rug. Now all that was left was to make the rags for the weft. I found an old pair of cotton curtains in a cupboard and spent a whole night cutting it into strips. Within a couple of hours I had my rug ready for the floor.I am very pleased with it even if my edges are not perfect – it’s now on the floor in the kitchen.

I’m now in the process of making rag strips for my second rug. This time I am double folding them so that I won’t have any fuzzy threads poking out all over the place. I’m making them from old cotton sheets this time and double folding the strips is time-consuming but I’m hoping that the overall finish will be neater.

From an old cardboard box...

Weavemaster Table Loom

8 or 9 years ago my sister gave me an old cardboard box containing, what she described as, a table weaving loom. The box was old and tatty and quite large and filled with bits and bobs which, she assured me, when put together would become a weaving loom. Unconvinced that this rusty and tatty looking object would ever weave it was confined to the loft, completely forgotten, for about 8 years.

About 7 months ago I decided it was time to take another look at this so called "weaving loom" and in the box I found a couple of old books dating from the 30's and 50's. One was the instruction book for the Weavemaster Table Loom and after reading through them I discovered that everything I needed to learn to weave was contained in this tatty old box!

Granted, the loom itself needed a lot of TLC - the reed and metal healds/heddles were heavily rusted and it badly needed re-stringing. I sanded and waxed all of the wooden "bits" and spent 3 days solid just cleaning the healds/heddles by soaking them in vinegar and then scrubbing them with wire wool. I did the same with the reed. They came up pretty well and I decided that it was time to put it all together...

What I initially thought was unusable turned out to be a lovely 4 shaft Weavemaster table loom from around the 1930's with a weaving width of 15" - large enough to learn to weave on... Unfortunately these looms are no longer manufactured and the only way to get replacement parts is to buy another loom - there are plenty of them around and sadly most of them in the same desperate need of TLC.

I've woven a few things in the past few months and on the loom you can see a table runner in a Swedish lace pattern - my first attempt at anything other than "tabby" weave. This is a beautiful little loom, a dream to weave on and I must say that anyone who has the chance of buying one of these looms should do so even if it does need a bit of TLC - it's well worth the trouble.

Unfortunately, I've been bitten by the bug :(. I have since bought another coupe of looms - a larger LillStina Swedish counterbalance loom and another table loom - an Ashford with a 24" weaving width.

I guess I'm hooked!