I had an old sheet left from a sheet set my Oma gave me when I was a child. I don’t know why but I kept that sheet set for years and years and now, at least 30 years after she gave it to me, I pulled it out, cut it into strips and matched some fabric around it to make a rug.

My buddy Mike inspired me. He’d made a Rosepath rug that I’d admired using sheets he got from goodwill. I’d wanted to try Rosepath and with my new Oxaback loom in the house and user tested (I wove a plain bath towel on it straight draw, and then added on two other projects straight draw….one using Shetland wool as warp and odd bits of sock yarn left form my over-abundance of sock knitting and the other a gold bamboo with ricrac affair. I’ll write those up at some point. I had a threading error, but the sock / shetland affair is being used to make tote bags, so I didn’t care for that. I’ll add that post shortly.

Back to Oma’s Rosepath Rug. I used up bits of material I had bought about 15 years ago in this rug as well. I have a fabric problem (like a knitting yarn problem…it’s why I don’t go out to stores) and had bought a long time ago several bits of fabric on clearance thinking I would make quilts. Not.

But who knew? I took up weaving!

I used a red almost suede, but very polyester fabric with a shiny jersey green (I loved the color and the feel). Combined with some upholstery fabric in gold and some cream upholstery fabric that I have no idea what I thought I would need it for, I had a rag rug in the making.

Here it is finished-almost (I need to twist the fringe – which I hate doing – but I have another rug in the works – next post – so I need to get this off the craft table ASAP).

First rag rug on the Oxaback Lilla. This is an awesome loom. Another pic, hopefully you can see that the rug is packed pretty tightly.

The warp for this rug was 12/6 cotton seine twine. Bought at the Woolery. I had someone once tell me that was only for tapestry weaving. Not so. Works great as a rug warp and comes in lots of colors as well if you buy the Bockens version. I had one warp break, but I had the tension pretty incredibly tight, so not surprising. More surprising that more didn’t.

All in all the loom is amazing. The rug turned out spectacularly well. And now…I just have to twist that bloody fringe. Ugh.