Finally! The Denim Rug Project Moves Forward.

The woven rug so far.

I know that I have not been posting regularly lately.  This project has been taking a long time to get to a point that I had something new worth showing to my readers.  Before I went too far on making the rug, I needed to get my strips made.  They took a long time to make.  I had to convert a pile of cut up denim jeans into strips and make them into folded strips with the raw edges on the inside.  All in all, I have made 480 feet (146.30 meters) of 1/2 inch wide (1.27 cm.) strips.  It took a long time.  

The top row needs to be pulled closer to the row beneath it.

Also, early in the project I completely changed directions on this project.  What started as a simple hooked rug changed into a woven rug.  Once I realized just how much the denim frayed and unraveled, I decided that I really did not want a rug that left so much lint and bits of thread all over the floor.  The picture in the magazine looked nice, but it was shot from a distance.  Up close it did not look like something I would want in my house.  I decided that I really needed to change the plan, which caused this project to take much longer than I thought it would.

Keeping the ties on the rolls turned out to be a bad idea.

Readers that have an interest in making a rug like this can scroll back through my earlier posts to get more detail on how to make the project.  For this post I want to relate some of the things I have learned along the way on making the project since the last few posts.

A small portion of the strips needed for the project.

I had made a makeshift loom to hold all my strips.  It is still working well, but there have been a couple of small modifications.  I added a clamp to each end of the bar holding my rolls of strips.  As I released tension on the loom to pull down on the long strips, the strips on each end tended to loosen a bit and the rolls fall over to the side.   The clamps help hold the rolls of strips upright.  It is just an extra precaution to keep the rolls from becoming too loose.  I need to keep the rolls tightly together in order to keep the width of the rug accurate.  While I am on the subject of adding clamps, I intend to use some clamps to hold the loom to my work table.  It has not been a problem yet, but at some point the rug is going to be heavy enough that it could pull the loom off the table.  I have lost count of how many pairs of jeans I have used, but it is at least twelve pairs of adult size jeans.

I found that it is important to measure the width after I wove in each new strip.  I want the edges of the rug to be even.  I also had to tighten down each row on a regular basis.  I want the rug to be tightly woven so that it will not shift when it is walked upon. 

Between weaving, tightening and measuring, each strip takes about thirteen minutes to complete the process.  I have timed it a number of times.  My best time was twelve minutes and fifteen seconds.  Every inch of length takes about half an hour.  My estimate on weaving the rug is seventy-two hours, and that is if everything goes right.  Sometimes things can go wrong.  At times I have missed a strip while weaving or I ran into some trouble when trying to loosen the strips.  (More on that in a moment.)

If you have been following this project all along you might remember that I started the project with all the rolls tied.  That turned out to be a mistake.  It worked well for a while, but since each roll was tied as I rolled it up the rolls did not have the ties in the same place.  At about eighteen inches (45.72 cm.) into weaving the strips, things started to become snarled.  I ended up having to take out all those binding threads.  I went back to using straight pins to hold the rolls of thread together, which was part of my original plan, but something I gave up when I thought the tied rolls were going to work by themselves.  At this point, I am back to using a straight pin in each roll.

As I weave the rug, I have to loosen the loom and release a little bit of length on the strips.  I have found that I can only release about three inches at a time.  If I do more than that the tension does not hold the strips in line and the strips start falling over onto other strips making it hard to figure out which strip should be the next in line.  I learned this the hard way.  One time I had the bright idea of trying to release six inches or seven inches at once.  It was a real mess trying to get everything sorted out.  I lost about three hours trying to set things right.  Now that the strips are no longer tied I have to take off all the straight pins and gently pull on the bottom of the carpet to release the rolls.  It is time consuming to take out and replace all the pins, but I think that it saves me time in the long run by keeping a proper amount of tension on the threads and by keeping them in line.

I might also add that I had underestimated just how hard this project was going to be on my hands.  If I work an hour at a time my hands will be sore for hours sometimes even overnight.  Arnica gel helps with that.  At this point I am trying to limit my work time to no more half hour a day.  This project is still going to take a while.

Since I took the rug photo I have actually added a couple more inches.  The project is moving forward toward completion.  No doubt I have more to learn along the way.  Keep checking back on the blog and I will let you know what else comes up.