After the marathon with the 24-shaft samples, I decided to do something simpler. One of my early projects, probably 18-20 years ago, was a rag rug. It was 8/4 carpet warp and t-shirt weft.
It was pretty easy to weave and the rug wore like iron. Until the warp threads started to fray near the header.
So, I browsed through the t-shirts I had and my husband's drawers for shirts that had seen better days. I decided on purple and white for the 8/4 cotton carpet warp, since I
had those colors and my bathroom is purple. The pattern is a color & weave play on log cabin. Threaded dark-light-dark-light for two inches, then light dark-light-dark for the next two. At the intersections, there are two threads of the same color next to each other. The sett is 12 epi.
The white t-shirts were cut around the body of the shirt, giving a long continuous weft. (This isn't as hard as it seems since you fold the shirt and cut it with a rotary cutter on a pad.) I cut them about 1 inch wide. The shirt strip naturally curls. This makes it easier to keep most of the cut edged from showing. They are alternated in the weft with the purple warp yarn. The color pattern changed when two shots of the purple yarn are through in succession. The weave structure, threaded on 8-shafts, is plain weave.
This is going slowly since I am limiting myself to about an hour a day of weaving. The heavy beat needed to pack in the weft can be damaging (to me). So easy does it.
