4 Tips For Designing Your Own Rug
This year our founder Christabel Balfour will have been teaching rug weaving for five years, both in person and online. Our latest online course - Rug Weaving On A Mirrix Loom begins in 10 days. Find out more about the course here.
In today’s blog post Christabel is sharing some thoughts on a less visible part of the rug-making process - designing rugs.
Whenever I teach rug-weaving, I focus most of all on technique. Weaving a sturdy, durable rug requires patience and care, and I work with my students to make sure that their selvedges are straight, their warp is evenly spaced and their weft is packed down firmly. But there is another element that we touch on in my classes, both in-person and online. A really good hand- woven rug will not only be structurally sound - it will also be well-designed.
Now traditionally, one of the major differences between tapestries that hang on the wall and rugs go on the floor is that tapestries tend to be image-based and rugs tend to be pattern-based. These days it’s quite common to see images in rugs or patterns in tapestry, but being aware of this distinction is very useful when you come to design your own rugs. And I always encourage my students to focus on four things - size, simplicity, speed and suitability.
Size
The first thing to consider when designing your rug is how big it will be. The rugs I demonstrate in my online courses are actually more akin to rug samples, usually measuring 16” by 24”. This gives students a chance to hone their weaving technique first before embarking on something bigger.
If you’re weaving a rug for the very first time, I highly recommend starting small. The larger the rug you are weaving, the more chance there is of something going wrong in the middle. Plenty of weavers start out with confidence, only to find that early mistakes lead to their rug buckling, bulging or pulling in.
The image above shows the first really big rug I made in 2016. Because I didn’t take enough care when warping, the tension was wildly off balance and the finished rug has a very pronounced ripple in the surface. I ended up salvaging the top half with the pink circle and unravelling the rest.
When you do feel confident aiming for something bigger, think carefully about the proportions of the rug itself. If you’re not weaving for a particular space, I recommend making the length of the rug x1.5 as long as the width. This is a simple proportion that will work in any room, and will allow your rug to fit in anywhere.
Simplicity
Once you know the size of your rug, it’s time to start on the rest of your design. And if you’re weaving a rug for the very first time, it’s best to avoid making your rug designs too complex. Remember that the purpose of your rug is to be a durable, functional textile, so it’s best to focus on technique over design when you’re starting out. It’s better to have a basic rug where the warps and selvedges are straight and the weft is consistent, as opposed to a complex rug which is badly woven.
In my online courses and in-person workshops, I often encourage my students to design rugs with solid shapes, where they are stacked vertically up the warp. This means you are able to focus on each shape as it comes, and you are never weaving with more than three weft sections at a time.
The number of weft sections in a rug is absolutely key. If shapes are stacked horizontally across the warp, you may find yourself weaving with 5, 7 or even 9 weft sections! This is something I build up to slowly in my online courses, so students can get used to weaving with one colour of weft, and then gradually add more as they grow in confidence.
It’s worth considering how many weft sections you will need in order to render your design on the loom. And remember it’s much easier and simpler to weave a repetitive pattern with multiple weft sections than it is to weave an image, where you will constantly be adding and removing weft sections for each stage of the design.
Finally, size is a factor once again. Make sure your design is not too detailed for the number of warps on your loom. By this I mean if you have a lot of small weft sections that are only one or two warps wide, you may need to make each of those weft sections larger to encompass more warps. If too much detail is compressed into too small of an area, the surface of your rug will start to buckle and distort. So bear this in mind as well when you come to design.
Speed
Another thing to factor in when considering the simplicity or complexity of your rug design is how long it will take you to weave. One of the reasons that rugs are woven with patterns instead of images is that patterns are faster. I see this all the time in my in-person workshops, where the students who weave a repetitive pattern almost always finish earlier than those weaving an image.
Repetitive patterns don’t require the same level of thinking and focus that images do. They allow the rug weaver to enter a flow state of weaving back and forth. Most of the time they only need to count how many rows they are weaving to keep track of the pattern, instead of referring to a drawing or marks on the warp.
Other design elements that can make your weaving process faster is having sections where one colour is weaving across the full width of the loom, and (as I mentioned earlier) weaving a stack of shapes vertically up the warp instead of side-by-side across it. You can also consider having a bolder, blockier design which allows you to use more strands of weft yarn at a time, instead of necessitating a finer yarn that takes longer to weave with.
Rug weaving can be very slow, and when you’re working on a larger piece it can feel like it is taking forever. It’s really easy to lose motivation and to get discouraged if your rug is taking you weeks and months to finish. So it is really worth thinking about how to simplify your design to make it faster.
Suitability
The final thing to consider when designing your rug is its suitability to the environment that it will sit in. Sometimes it’s fun to have a rug that is a statement piece and draws focus in the room, but most of the time people want their rugs to complement the space rather than distract from it.
In light of this, think about your colours and patterns in terms of what works in your home. If you’re making a rug where the end destination is uncertain, I recommend mixing neutral shades with occasional pops of colour. Start with a base colour that will do well on the floor and hide the dirt (browns, greys and blues are good for this) and add additional colours which complement this first one.
And when you’re considering whether to weave an image or a design, it’s worth visualising the rug on the floor or on the wall. Again, rugs with images really do best on the wall, or in a large space where they are not covered by furniture. Rugs that will be obscured by tables or chairs should be repetitive, so that the eye isn’t distracted by what’s missing from the composition. Similarly, hallways often do best with a repeated pattern that encourages onward movement, rather than distracting. It’s worth bearing in mind the things when you come to plan out your design.
Finally - some rules are made to be broken. My advice in this blog post is just that - advice. There are as many opinions about interior design as there are people on this planet, and the great thing about making your own rugs is that you get to make something that is unique to you. Rugs bring so much to any space that they are in. Whether it’s a pop of colour, softening the acoustics of a room or bringing warmth and depth to a space, a rug is an excellent investment of time and creative energy.
But if there’s one thing I hope you get out of this post, it’s an awareness that weaving by hand has its limitations. Whether that’s in the form of time, materials or the extent of your own skills, it’s worth being aware of them all before you begin, and designing something that’s achievable for you.
What factors do you consider when you’re designing your rugs or weavings? Are you a careful planner or more spontaneous? Let us know in the comments!