Upcycling and proud of it!

It's been a great week for upcycling in our group with a range of no or low cost projects converting the unwanted into the delectable and desirable.  For starters, Leo's Beanery cafe gave us a coffee sack.  Old T shirts and pilled fleecy jumpers (all too worn out to recycle as anything wearable)  transformed the sack into this cosy and colourful rag rug.  We are sending it to Love in the Language of Yarn in Turkey in the hope that it will bring cosiness and cheer into the lives of a Syrian refugee family.

The sack makes an ideal base as it is double sided, has an inner waterproof lining to discourage any damp seeping through from the floor and comes already seamed to prevent fraying around the borders. The double layer means you can work through the top layer only, leaving the bottom layer as a protective base.

This was our first attempt at a rag rug and a useful learning curve. It uses the knotted method. Fleece is probably better than T shirt fabric because it is lighter, shrugs off moisture better and will be easier to wash and dry. Experimenting with design, drawing a pattern on the sack and then infilling it, rather than just having a random pattern will be the  creative challenge for our next one. Rag rugging is a great project to leave lying around.  Sort of like jigsaws used to be - family members tend to add a few strips in passing.

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