by Carolyn Steele Lane
Weaving Mug Rugs
Jill Johnstone mentioned to me one day that she wanted to try overshot and then I just happened to receive an email about a free Weave-along course that would introduce us to colour and overshot. I think I sent the email to Jill the day it started. She jumped in and I followed.
Wow, I never knew how much fun it can be to experiment with such small projects. I don't have too many colours to play with yet, but then I found an old box of cross stitch threads and a world of opportunity opened up. I only explored one warp of tiny rugs. We were going to host a session on colour before Christmas, but then we hoped to give away most of our samples.
Normally, Overshot uses a Design thread that is usually twice as thick as the warp and the tabby yarn. The warp thread and the tabby yarn make a plain weave. So, if the design thread ever wore off, you would have a plain weave cloth underneath. That also means that for every Design thread you throw for Weft, you would follow it up with a plain weave tabby thread.
We started class by using one colour in the warp and testing various tabby threads in the Weft. My warp was burgundy. Notice how the red and green make a muddy green. Because plain weave has the thread going over and under every thread the colours blend more and having them closer on the colour wheel and in value made nicer backgrounds.
Weaving Mug Rugs
Jill Johnstone mentioned to me one day that she wanted to try overshot and then I just happened to receive an email about a free Weave-along course that would introduce us to colour and overshot. I think I sent the email to Jill the day it started. She jumped in and I followed.
Wow, I never knew how much fun it can be to experiment with such small projects. I don't have too many colours to play with yet, but then I found an old box of cross stitch threads and a world of opportunity opened up. I only explored one warp of tiny rugs. We were going to host a session on colour before Christmas, but then we hoped to give away most of our samples.
Normally, Overshot uses a Design thread that is usually twice as thick as the warp and the tabby yarn. The warp thread and the tabby yarn make a plain weave. So, if the design thread ever wore off, you would have a plain weave cloth underneath. That also means that for every Design thread you throw for Weft, you would follow it up with a plain weave tabby thread.
We started class by using one colour in the warp and testing various tabby threads in the Weft. My warp was burgundy. Notice how the red and green make a muddy green. Because plain weave has the thread going over and under every thread the colours blend more and having them closer on the colour wheel and in value made nicer backgrounds.
We laid out Design threads on these backgrounds to see what would stand out. One really wants a design that pops. It helped to take photos and make grey tones of the colours to check their values.
And without further ado, here are some of my mug rugs.
And without further ado, here are some of my mug rugs.
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