weaving

How to Combine Two Woven Rugs into One

/ Kelsie Oreta / 6 Comments

Before I was living more deliberately, I made many shopping decisions that weren’t all the way thought out. This rug was one of those. At Homegoods, I determined that I liked it, but couldn’t think of where I “needed” it. When I overheard another woman looking at the second (out of two) I bought it. That store has such a quick turnover, I didn’t want to miss out!

I got it home and, of course, I still didn’t have a place for it. Maybe if it was bigger? A few days later, instead of returning it, I bought the second one! It was still there! It must be luck, right?

These are the methods of thought I now know to be incongruent with my values. Even as I continue to purge excess, I still try to see where things would fit, given the right project. In this case, my upstairs hallway was the perfect length for them to run top to bottom.

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They moved around a lot, and I wasn’t fooling anyone. If you have two traditional carpets you’d like to attach, head over and buy some fiberglass carpet seaming tape and follow the instructions over at Ugly Duckling House. But if, like me, you have two woven rugs that won’t give the illusion of being one with some tape, Continue reading →

Large Scale Circular Woven Art DIY

/ Kelsie Oreta / 4 Comments

It all started with a hula hoop.

Remember the blog post about making woven art with a hula hoop? I had that piece hanging above my couch for all of these months, but there was one thing that was bugging me nonstop: the scale.

DIY Circle Weave on a Hula Hoop with TinyKelsieTinyKelsie living room progress with circle weave and mid century couch

It wasn’t big enough for the space. I’ve been studying styling small spaces for quite some time, and during that time, I’ve learned that larger scale items in a room, assuming they aren’t crowding it, make it seem less cluttered and larger. So that child-sized hula hoop wasn’t going to cut it.

I eventually found an adult sized hoop, and even wrapped the outside in yarn before second guessing going forward. The nearly-begun project sat in my basement for a month or so, before I saw this guy:

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Well, not with the artwork on it. This frame, originally gold, was found at a thrift store. On their once-a-season half price day, I snatched it up along with the most hideous beginner oil painting of a swan one has ever seen in it. Seriously–it was dreadful. Surely it lowered the cost of the high quality frame it was in, so THANKS :).

After painting it and stapling chicken wire to the back, I used it to display Tobias’ ever-revolving artwork at our first house. Lacking a hallway, and frankly, any unclaimed wall, it was in T’s room before I made that over, later finding its home in the basement, right next to the hula hoop.

So, one could almost say that this project found me.

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And it was simple enough!

Tools:

  • Scissors
  • Staple gun loaded with staples

Materials:

Steps:

  1. Decide where in your frame you’d like the hoop weave. I wanted to draw the eye up, so the center of mine is as high as it would fit with the existing weave.
  2. With the frame facing away from you, pull one end of basic yarn through the hoop, closest to the outer edge of the hoop. I suggest doing so near where the original warp thread was for a cohesive look.
  3. Keep pulling until the end of the yarn and the yarn closest to the ball are long enough to reach from behind the frame, through the hoop at its desired positioning, back to the inside of the frame, with an additional 2-4 inches.
  4. Staple yarn on back of frame.
  5. Repeat steps 2-4 until you have as many warp threads as you did in your original weaving. It should look like this: large-circular-woven-art-diy-tutorial-6
  6. Get to weaving! Because my warp threads were so far apart, I didn’t do as many fancy weaving techniques as the last portion of the weave. I did do some finger weaving and traditional braiding off of the loom with different yarns.
  7. With each line of weaving, staple to the back of the frame. large-circular-woven-art-diy-tutorial-5
  8. When the weaving is complete, cut all excess threads.
  9. If you don’t want to be able to see the wall behind the weaving in open areas, and to prevent damage when hanging, cover the back with poster board and tape around the perimeter.
  10. Hang it up!

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The first portion of this project was far more time consuming than this was. It didn’t take long at all, and I think it’s 1000 times better now that it’s finished!