Denim Rug Project Part 4

Eight foot lengths of denim in coils.

I have made some progress on this project.  I'll recap briefly for new readers.  I started this project for a denim rug planning to make it using the minimal instructions from a magazine article.  Once I started the project, I realized that I really did not like the way it looked.  Mainly, the denim unraveled and had a lot of strings and lint.   It really was not the rug I wanted.  The problem was now I had a lot of strips of denim and had to figure out how to use them.  This begins a cautionary tale about changing your mind about a project when you are well into it.

Ready for sewing into strips.

My next attempt was to sew folded strips of fabric right sides together to make a long tube and turn the tube.   Forty-five minutes later, I was still trying to turn the first tube right side out.  The denim was bulky and did not want to turn easily despite the strips being two inches wide.

Denim unraveling into long threads.

I still wanted a denim rug, so I began by zig zag sewing around each strip to try to corral the threads.  Then I started sewing the strips together and tried crocheting a rug using a size G hook.  I actually liked the look and feel of the strip, but the threads were still my nemesis.  I actually did about twenty-five feet of denim in this manner, and trimmed threads as I came to them.  The next day I came back to my work and there were more threads.  It was as if the denim had decided to unravel itself more over night.  I decided that I could just not live with those threads.  I was tracking them everywhere through the house.  So, it was on to Plan C or is it Plan D?  I have lost track.

A strip of crocheted denim, which was my Plan B.

It is no use blaming the material for how it behaves.  It is what it is. (Note:  heavier denim did not ravel as much as lighter weight denim.)  So now the plan is to encase the threads.  I sewed the strips of denim into eight foot long lengths, folded them in half wrong sides together and ironed them so that I would have a center line.  Each edge was folded to the center line, and ironed.  Then the strips were folded in half and ironed again so that the raw edges were on the inside as if making binding for a quilt.  The fabric was pinned along its length and then sewn down the length of the fabric.  The raw edges are no longer in sight, so no more escaping threads.  However, this process is very time consuming.  It takes much longer than you might think to make and iron the strips.

Of course, now I have a number lengths of eight foot long strips, although not yet nearly enough for the project.  I sew them during the day when I have some time to be on the sewing machine.  In order not to have a tangled mass of strips when I am ready to use them, I rolled the lengths of fabric into coils and tied them up with some thread.  The coils needed be stabilized so that they did not come loose when they were being moved or stored.  The thread wrapped and tied holds the coils nicely.  So far, I have seventeen coils, which is about 128 feet of  fabric.  I have five more strips pinned and ready to be sewn and about four more strips that have been joined into eight foot lengths but not ironed or pinned yet.  This is not all of the fabric needed.  It is only where I am on the project right now.  More on the fabric needed next time I post on this project.

That brings me to my next subject.  This project is going to be quite time consuming. Rather than subjecting readers to multiple posts on how much material I was able to manage to sew in a week, I will be blogging on other projects as well. 

Regular readers may remember that last years long term project left me with a bad case of creative burnout.  I plan to pace myself on this project so the same thing does not happen again this year.  I will be blogging intermittently about one project or another.  I generally try to limit myself to three projects going at one time.  I am just getting ready to start a second project.  A third won't be started until after I finish sewing the strips for the denim rug project.  So for now, expect to see a post on the denim rug project about every other week.