We all have that one craft project lying around that just seems to take aggeeess! Well, this rug has been my UFO (unfinished object) for a while now and I can’t tell you how chuffed I am that it’s finally done. And, what’s more for a simple rag rug, it turned out really well. Ta da!

How I made this simple rag rug:

I used one of our Ragged Life XL Hessian, but hemmed one edge of the rectangle to make a 140 x 140cm square. Next, I sketched on the triangles to make an easy paint-by-numbers style project. This kind of design is easy to follow and easy to portion out. I knew that I had 72 triangles to fill, so I could set myself a monthly triangle target if I wanted to. You can tell that kind of didn’t work out to plan though considering how long it has taken me to make! It was a good idea in theory though 🙂

Once the pattern was locked, I needed to decide on the colours. This is the most important element to designing a beautiful rag rug. Fortunately for me, I’m the lucky owner of a mountain of beautiful 100% Wool Blanket Yarn. I salvage it from the mills in Yorkshire. And, although I’ve made quite a few cushions in the loopy technique using blanket yarn (the one below, for example), I haven’t made any loopy blanket yarn rugs yet. It seemed about time.

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Having narrowed down my fabric choice, I moved onto colours. I wanted to make a simple rag rug, with fairly neutral colours, so it could fit in practically any home (a good idea when you don’t know where you’re going to put it!) With that brief in mind, I chose cream for half the triangles. I could have easily gone with a grey, navy or white though. Funnily enough, the cream is as far as I got in choosing the colours. I couldn’t wait to get started, so I just decided to rag rug the cream parts first then decide on the second colour or colours when I got to them. Here’s how the rug looked with just the cream. It actually grew surprisingly quick because the blanket yarn comes pre-cut into strips and the thickness of the fabric fills the hessian quicker.

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Choosing the second colour:

Once I’d completed the cream part of the rag rug, I dilly and dallied about what colour to fill in with. I also asked you guys what you thought and you had so many good suggestions that it confused me even more (that’s a compliment). I was really tempted to throw my whole subtle vision out of the window and go with a rainbow pattern. However, I stuck to my guns and went with a baby blue, which I thought looked quite calming in combination with the cream.

The Finished rag rug:

So, that’s a little intro to how the rug came about. Here are a few up close photos, so you can see the details. For example, if you look carefully, you can see flecks of cream in the blue triangles. These are actually the pieces of cream wool that join the blanket yarn strips together. Nothing went to waste in this project!

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Thanks for reading! What did you think? Comment below to let us know what colour you would have chosen with the cream. Or, if you’d like to be the first to see more of our rag rug makes, why not join our Rag Rug Community on Facebook, follow us on Instagram or join our fortnightly newsletter here.

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As always, happy rag rugging!

Elspeth x