My mum, Victoria, has been on an absolute rag rug roll recently. Remember her upholstered rag rug chair from only a few weeks ago. Well, she’s been at it again and I wanted to share her latest proggy rug, made for a cottage with flagstone floors in the Lake District. 

This particular rug (done in the shaggy technique of rag rugging with a Rag Rug Spring Tool) was made using a mixture of smaller balls of blanket yarn found in our 1kg Lucky Dip Packs, as well as small blanket scraps picked up from the mill (these are a bit too scraggy to sell on to you lovely lot).

Below are a few photos of Victoria’s finished rug and her musings on her first blanket yarn proggy rug…

Victoria’s Cosy Cottage Proggy Rug:

Elspeth had some wider strips and odd-shaped pieces of blanket and scarf left over from balling up the blanket yarn, so I had the idea to use them up in a rug. It’s the first time I’ve made a whole rug completely in blanket yarn (previously I’ve made either loopy cushions or mixed blanket yarn with other fabrics). It was a a different experience working with the blanket yarn, so I thought I’d share my thoughts and observations:

The rug grew surprisingly quickly

It didn’t take at all long to make. From start to finish, the rug took me about three weeks, and that was only doing a couple of hours here and there. It ended up with 70 rows, made up of between 30-58 pieces per row. I estimate the whole rug only took around 25 hours to make (which is quick even by my standards). I think that it was particularly speedy compared to other rugs I’ve made, as the thicker fabric meant that I could space my pieces further apart. Sometimes I missed out a full 8 strands between each row and the next. Plus, the pre-cut strips of blanket yarn cut down on the fabric prep time.

The final rug was really light

I worked out that the 107 x 74cm rug only took me 1.8kg of blanket yarn (approx 8 balls), which was less than I thought it would. It was a bit of a crude measure as I weighed the rug before and after rag rugging it, but it was a good estimate. Elspeth generally advises that 8 balls covers a Medium Sized Rug Hessian (100 x 60cm) in the shaggy technique of rag rugging, so how far the fabric went was a bit of a surprise. It does depend on how far apart you space your pieces though and I took a few liberties with a few rows.

I had to cut some blanket yarns in half

When I was using blanket yarn that was nicely cut into strips (as sold on the Ragged Life website), I sometimes cut them in half lengthways to make them easier to pull through the hessian. This depended on how heavy the yarn was though.

I cut fringes off the yarn

Normally I’m not renowned for my neatness – I’m more of an intuitive rag rugger, but when I came across a blanket yarn that had a fringe, I generally cut the fringe off to make the rug look a little more uniform. It’s not necessary, but I did it as a personal design preference.

The thicker yarns made the rug cosier

The blanket yarns I was working with were a real mix. Some were soft, thin cashmere, others were thick, cushy lambswool and there were even some tweed remnants in there. When I was using a particularly chunky yarn with a loose weave, I switched from the Rag Rug Spring Tool to the rug hook because I could pull each end of the strip through more easily. The thicker blanket yarns made the proggy rug feel incredibly soft and lush, so they were worth persevering with.

Patterned yarns added character and depth

Personally, I love the fact that most of the blanket yarns have some pattern to them, even if only a small chevron in white. This made them look more interesting than block colours. As I was using up a lot of the woollen scraps, I ended up using a huge variety of different patterns and weaves. This added to the character of the rug.

All in all, I’m so pleased with my final rug. It’s the softest one I’ve ever made. I can’t wait to properly photograph it in its final home in the Lake District.

So, that was Victoria’s Cosy Cottage proggy rug insights. If you’d like to find out more about our 100% Wool Blanket yarn, check out our blog post here, or to get your hands on a variety of balls that would look lovely in a rug like this, take a look at our 1kg Lucky Dip Pack.

Thanks for reading, and do let Victoria know what you think of her rug by commenting below.

Elspeth x