Pin 174

Original pin:

http://mollykaystoltz.com/t-shirt-shag-rug-tutorial/

T-shirt rag rug tutorial

As promised, I am wrapping up unfinished projects. As some of my friends can attest, this one has been a looooooong time in the works. I started in in APRIL!! I worked on it pretty steadily April-May, dragging my bag of supplies to craft nights and work days. We got rid of all our carpet in May. I was making this scrap rug for my older son's bedroom. Right around that time we stumbled across this brand-new-in-the-package rug at a garage sale that is the one with the roads and buildings printed on it. He fell in love with it and I picked it up for $2. No need for this one so it was rolled up and put away. It took up a lot of space on my "craft shelf." Haha. I don't have a real crafting area in my home, so I randomly find space to cram my crafting stuff and this found its way onto a shelf--where it repeatedly fell off!

Let me rewind back to April. . .

I wanted this to be larger than the tutorial--which is the size of a t-shirt. So I bought fabric remnants to use instead of gathering a wardrobe's worth of t-shirts. All of my fabric came out of the remnants bin so it was fairly cheap. I chose a large piece of denim for the base because I thought it would be sturdy. Since I was not using knit for the scrap pieces, I cut all the fabric strips using my pinking shears to prevent some fraying. HOURS later, I was suffering from my first real pinjury!!

 

But now that I had all my strips, the real work could begin. I followed the tutorial to cut the base and weave the strips in. My base was so large I could only do about three rows an hour. Days and days later I made it to this point, at which it was rolled up and stashed away for nearly nine months.

 

See how close this was to actually being finished!!!

Yesterday, I pulled it all out and finished the puppy up in about 45 minutes. Seriously, why couldn't I do that earlier?? Here is the finished product:



I didn't go in with a specific pattern plan, it just worked out that I used up all my colors early on and was left with a lot of blue. I started in the middle and worked my way out to each edge. I did the center row and then did one or two above and then one or two below, then back to the top for a few, and so on. . .

Since this doesn't really have a destination in my home any more--thanks to the much COOLER manufactured rug, I just kind of left it lying in the middle of the room where I finished it yesterday. When the boys got home from school I asked them "where do you think we should put it?" secretly hoping they might fight "my room! my room!" but the only answer I got was from super-cool L, "uh, how about on the floor."  They did play on it a little and pulled out a strip or two. Maybe its best NOT to put it in their room because I just may find one of them in a pile of strips with a holey swatch of denim one day as they deconstruct it.

Total cost: I am pretty sure I spent around $17 on fabric remnants

Total time: I am just going to have to do some math here . . . at three rows an hour and 41 rows plus the hours spent cutting strips, I am going to say all together I probably spent somewhere between 18-20 hours on this one.

Final verdict: Its a homeless little rug for now. I am glad to have it finished and off my craft shelf because it took up a lot of room. It was easy enough but I'm not convinced it is going to hold up to a lot. And I am a little worried about washing it and having to rebuild! Time will tell. . . To create another rag rug I would probably find a better way to secure the strips--tying or stitching or something. But I will start much smaller for the first trial.