My cousin works at a Camp Retreat, and at one point had access to their
inventory of old t-shirts. She had gotten the shirts for herself, in
order to cut out the images on the shirts and patch them together to
make souvenir quilts for her fellow counselors. The plain 4-8 inches at
the bottom were scrap, as far as she was concerned, but to me they were
valuable rug stock. And never even worn!
I warped my loom with 8/4 cotton rug warp, doubled, at 8 EPI. (To be clear, it was "technically" 16 EPI since I was using two strands as one.) I threaded it for goose-eye twill. All three rugs are roughly 25" wide x 40" long.
The first rug was all purple t-shirt loops for weft. In retrospect I wish I had spiral-cut the purple t-shirts, in order to get longer, smoother, uninterrupted sections without bumps. At the time I either didn't think of that, or hadn't planned on using a single-color weft. In any case, the t-shirts were cut in 1" loops and joined end-to-end in lark's head fashion. I then treadled for goose-eye twill, and here's the result:
The second rug was a thank-you gift for my cousin, in compensation and gratitude. She really likes bright colors. I treadled as for straight twill to get zig-zags, which I thought suited the snazzy rainbow colors.
The third rug was for myself, and much more in line with my own tastes. Not a t-shirt rug this time! Instead, I used old bedsheets ripped into 2" strips and joined lark's head fashion, just like the t-shirt loops. Again I treadled for goose-eye twill. Much subtler, with very little contrast, the pattern is somewhat difficult to make out.
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