The first picture is my "50s rug" which had started out as the left overs from the anniversary rug yesterday. The first few rows are mostly those... then I started rescuing items or being given them which worked with the "dao" of the rug... and away its gone. I'll keep working on it so long as I keep getting colors which work well with it, or until someone sees it and says, "Stop, its beautiful as is, I'll take it!" I put the yard stick diagonally across it because its an oval, so as to give an average diameter.
I work on this rug purely to exercise my artistic muse... to engage and create beauty. I always have at least one rug going which serves this purpose... and I have another in the wings when this one is done. It will have more "pure" colors, and will both look and feel sensual (silks, satins, etc.)
The one on the left is a jeans rug obviously. I've not worked on it for a long time... what you see is pretty much 2 week's work on it. Then I started running out of jean material, having just finished the "Cheryl" rug. That situation has since been radically rectified- since I started more aggressively seeking to save clothes from an ignominious and eternal entombment in landfills, about 1/2 of what I've rescued has been jeans of various colors and sizes. I could probably make 8 jeans rugs with what I have now, at least half with leather centers as with the "Cheryl" rug, as I've also rescued several torn leather jackets. I probably will do that for my next jean rug, given how effectively the two materials worked in the afore mentioned rug.
The one next to it is my coat rug. You'll notice the addition of a navy coat as every third strip.
Art is still the primary reason to work on rugs such as these, but these unique materials have their own significance. In the case of jeans... there's nothing more "Americana" than blue jeans. In the case of the coats, its to prove my contention that with this craft, I really can come close to making a silk purse from a sow's ear. The material is brutally hard to work with. The center is wool and made me itch (Tess can't even touch the rug!), all three tend to fray out, etc. Stitching it takes a lot of work and burns a lot of stress off.
In that sense, both rugs are very similar. I don't have wood to chop or weeds to whack as I did when I lived locations more rustic and less populace, so these serve as physical stress relief for me. To some extent, any kind of rug does that, but these heavy and obstinate fabrics are uniquely well suited to rug making as the physical working out of stress. Indeed, if I keep making jeans and coat rugs, I'll wind up looking like Popeye gone goth!
Both rugs- like the 50s one above- are ones we'll either give to a friend for a major event, or try to sell. (Unfortunately, I'm the world's worst bargainer... I can't haggle my way out of a paper bag... so if anyone out there is an ebay or arts fair expert, I'd love to be mentored!)
So you see, I always have multiple rugs going... rugs to please the eye, rugs to sooth the soul, rugs to take along to the doctor's office or pharmacy.
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