Our annual rag rug making weekend  at Cober Hill was a great weekend.

After all the bad weather we were able to do our workshop on microwave dyeing. These are the results:

We should have some lovely rugs made with all these wonderful colours.

Ilene Scholes kindly talked to us about rug tools that she has collected.

These are some of them.

It was interesting to see that some of the wooden ones were carved in a shape similar to the bone and horn ones. Often tools were made of anything that could be adapted.

We also looked at making toothbrush rugs using a basic “blanket stitch” knot over a core. My big toothbrush rug is on show at the Nantwich museum rug exhibition, here is a smaller and thinner one in progress:

Hannah also started one in wool:

and we thought that the wool works well and makes a soft rug.

Wendy brought along a half completed rug that had been donated to her, shown here for Retro fans. The canvas was very floppy, but ironing it has helped revive the stiffening.

Here is the pattern that this square was taken from:

This photo shows our hard work, and then there are some individual photos below. We will include  other rugs when they are completed.

One of the lovely things about our group is the variety of work we all do, there is always something to look at or learn about…

After Cober Hill we met in May to sort out any rugs that had been in the Tolson exhibition, that were not going onto Red house. I have just been over to Red House to do  a talk, and to see the lovely exhibition, it looks fantastic, and our thanks to Jenny and Helga for its safe transition.  At the period garden festival at Red house members of the group will be demonstrating rag rugging on the last Sunday.

We also looked again at twined rugs, using Bobbie Irwins books as our technical support… the instructions are lovely and clear and very easy to follow.

This is a rug in progress, and a similar finished one , both made by Kay.

This is the start of a twined seat pad or basket: the first rows over 4 crossed warps have been worked, and I am just adding in extra warps, secured with bin tyes.

We also had a few sheep to visit us

and finally for everybody a taste of summer: