1/1/2016

I liked making a crocheted rag rug so much, I decided to use up a TON of worsted-weight wool yarn making a punchneedle rug. I drew a simple grid of 4” squares just by dragging a pencil between the threads. Voila! Perfectly straight lines, on grain every time!

Backing:
MCG rug yarn punchneedle rug backing, 30x36”.
I think this might be a fat half-yard of rug warp.

Punch needles:
Amy Oxford punches, #13 & #14 (the mini with heels and the mini)

Dyes:
Wilton’s Brown icing gel
Wilton’s Golden yellow icing gel
Koolaid Orange
Lipton Tea

Yarns:
Assorted worsted weight wool yarn, both full skeins and scraps, bought years ago or received as gifts and hand-me-downs. Some are overdyed to add more colors to the rug. The more the merrier!

Photo 1: After punching for a couple of evenings, I have most of my dark squares outlined. There are so many ways to punch a grid that you could make many different rugs from the same design. The colors can be planned or random. You can use different filling patterns in each square. You could make circles, squares, lines, triangles, hearts, stars, flowers, etc in each square. Very versatile.

1/6/2016

Today I plan to marry some wools to darken and prim them up for the darker areas in the rug. This is just simmering them together in a pot with some Johnson’s baby shampoo to get the dye to bleed, then adding vinegar to get the blood back into all of the yarns to even out the differences.

Ok…so after 2 hours in the pot, the yarns don’t want to bleed. Patons Classic is very well dyed, IMHO. I’m going to mix up some food colors and play now. I mixed up about 1/2-1 t. Wilton’s brown in 1 c hot water from the pot, stirred well, then added it gradually to the pot.

At the three hour mark, I mixed up 1 t citric acid in 1 c. room temp water. I slowly poured half of it into the pot and stirred gently. The water is now a murky green. Gonna give that a half hour, then add the rest of the citric acid.

At the end of 4 hours and fifteen minutes, I took the pot off the heat to let it cool down by itself.

01-07-2016

Photos 3 & 4 show the results of overdyeing with Wilton’s brown.
Today I overdyed some yarns with Wilton’s golden yellow. I accidentally let the water boil before adding the dye, and the yarns bled, which was what I wanted to have happen yesterday. So no panic! This resulted in some great prim colors. I also did a small batch in koolaid orange and another in Lipton tea.

01-08-2016

Photo 5 & 6 show before and after some yarns are married with Synthrapol in boiling (oops!) water, then overdyed with Wilton’s Golden Yellow and set with citric acid in a simmering hot water bath for an hour. I used two heaping 1/2 teaspoons of dye, but the yarn bled during my final wash. Next time, I won’t add the extra 1/2 t of dye.

Patons Royal Purple became Warm Chocolate Brown
Patons Dark grey mix became Heathery Loden
Plymouth grey became Dark Greeny Gold
Patons Winter white became Sunflower Gold
Berger du Nord Brass became Warm Old Brass
Patons Leaf Green became Medium Greeny Gold.

My favorites from this batch are the Sunflower Gold and Heathery Loden. I think all of these colors will look fabulous in this scrappy rug. The yarns were all put into the water dry and the dye poured into the hot water. The resulting yarn looks nicely kettle-dyed. I love the little dots of different shades in the rug as I punch; they look like little highlights or points of light. They make the rug twinkle.

Photos 7, 8, & 9:
7 shows the whole backing.

8 is a close-up of my first punches. At first, I thought I would do only single straight lines, some vertically (the darkest colors) and some horizontally (the medium colors). But after punching just an inch of a sample block, I didn’t like it at all for this rug.

9 shows the beginnings of two blocks punched in concentric squares of two rows each. The brass and purple are not overdyed. The barn red and tan were overdyed with Wilton’s Brown.

01-09-2016

Photos 10, 11, & 12:
Before and after pics with yarn dyed koolaid orange. Just the “after” photo of tea dyed winter white, Plymouth grey, and dark grey mix. The last two will probably need to be overdyed again.

01-12-2016

I’ve got most of my yarns overdyed or washed now, and I just finished my 7th dark square.

Photos 14-16: a wee bit of progress this morning.

01-14-2016

Twelve dark squares complete as of tonight. I succumbed to the temptation to label my yarns, as I can’t tell the colors apart after dark.

01-15-2016

14 of 40 squares are finished, and the first of three rows of the border are complete. Photo 17: progress photo @ 35% complete.

01-17-2016

If you want to try out colors for your squares, make 1-yd (m) skeins and secure with a safety pin in the square. As long as you can thread the punch needle, the yarn doesn’t have to be in continuous pieces. When not in use, they can be pinned to the outside of your center-pull balls.

01-18-2016

16 of 40 squares are finished, and about half of the border is complete. Photo 18: 40% complete. I am readjusting colors on individual squares as I go. I was having trouble with over-punched center squares and some lines of color that needed to be changed. I redid three areas this morning.

01-19-2016

18 of 40 complete. Photo 21: 45% complete.

01-20-2016

Halfway done. Photo 22: 20 of 40 squares finished. I think I’ll start in the center and work my way to the outer edge of the rug to finish it. My original idea was to make the second half of the squares lighter. We will see what the rug has to say about that, though.

01-24-2016

Photo 23: Four light squares are done…rug is now 60% complete.

01-25-2016

Photos 24 & 25: Overdyeing with Wilton’s teal. I love the results.

01-29-2016

Photo 26: 70% complete. I’m slowing down a bit due to sore wrists…maybe a square a day if I’m lucky.

02-01-2016

Photo 27: 80% complete.

02-14-2016

Only 4 blocks to go, then I can think about how to bind the edges.

02-22-2016

I finished punching all of the blocks this morning. I added my initials to one of the blocks by ripping out a couple of lines and re-punching in bright red for contrast.

Tonight I’m leaning toward the forward-fold-and-whip-the-edges method to finish the edges from Cindi Gay’s blog.

02-25-2016

Photo 30: The rug is shown with the edges of the warp trimmed to 1 1/4”. Tonight I got about half of the first step of basting done using a sharp yarn darner (smallest size in a pkg of size 14-18) and Coats & Clark Button & Craft thread.

02-26-2016

Half done with the second step of basting. Decided to use the largest yarn darner in the package, and I like it better than the shortest one.

02-29-2016

I finished basting the edges tonight.

03-02-2016

I’ve spent two days on whipping so far.

03-03-2016

4 pm: whipping is done except for the 4 corners. Now to educate myself on the mitered corners.

The corners were easy to stitch; the hardest thing is getting the needle through all those layers.

I used less than an ounce (.8 oz.) to whip the rug.

Done, done, and done!