Monday, March 31, 2008

Q&A: How much material is needed for a "normal" rug?


My dear friend is full of great questions today! Glad to answer them. I know being the husband of a disabled professor, that the question one person asks, 10 people have in their heads.

This is a more complicated question though, not quite so suitable to the "Q&A format" of the previous two posts.

There are SO many variables. Synthetic fabrics, for example, are lighter than cotton, which is lighter than linen. The plastics from which I make my umbrella/shopping bag/shower curtain rugs are VERY light, which is why that's the rug I usually take with me on the "L" or to Tess' doctor.

I have noticed, however, that one BIG gym bag full of strips will make a rug about the size of the rug shown above.

I can also tell you that this rug was made out of cottons and cotton polys- probably 2/3 cotton by weight. I weighted the clothesbefore I started the rug, and it came out to around 25 pounds. (Because I've been doing this so long, I knew what size I wanted the rug, and about what size the pile of "raw clothes" had to be to make it.) Zippers, seams, pockets removed, the finished rug was closer to 20 pounds.

So if you use clothing which is a mixture of cotton and poly, and want a rug about this size, this should give you some idea of how much by weight you'll need. For an all cotton rug, you'll need more by weight, for one heavier in synthetics, you'll need less by weight.


One other relevant hint: For my stitching, I've noticed that VERY consistently, 1 foot of strip = 1 inch of stitch!

2 comments:

Joy said...

Great blog and good information. I love to recycle things whenever possible.

Listig said...

Thank you for your compliments!

I've always been very into recycling. We fertilized our garden with a compost pile, our wash rags were scraps of clothes too tattered to even make into a rug... my parents came of age in the depression, they passed the thrifty ethos on.

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