crocheting a rug

out of scrap materials. 

A while back, in fact before I headed to the Flagstaff Cabin Crafting Weekend, I was looking for some ideas of a project that travels easily. Pack it in a bag and take it along without dragging along a sewing machine.

I hit the world of Pinterest and found absolutely darling crocheted rugs that I thought would be super fun to try my hand at. 

All I needed was a bunch of leftover fabrics. check.

A crochet hook. After Hobby Lobby it was check.

Lazy days and moments to sit and spin mindless miles of cut fabric into a rug. check.

I cut strips of leftovers into 1 inch strips and started crocheting. Although I had seen some darling rugs that weren't in a circle pattern, this is what I ended up doing. I do have a handy tutorial to link to that shows you how I attached the strips to each other without using a sewing machine. Makes car traveling a cinch with this project. I just need to do some car traveling! 

This rug is actually going to make it into Alyx's bathroom at some point. It isn't completed yet ... I ran out of blue fabrics and the lightweight denim I was using was a bit heavy to work with. I do have a wee bit of it left so I may have to just go with it and finish this! There are scraps of fabrics cut from pajama bottoms, fabrics that someone (not me believe it or not!) was going to quilt once upon a time and never finished, scraps of anything that had blue in it.

I came to a standstill on this one. Even though my dear Alyx is a tall and thin woman ... I figured I should add a few more circles around this thing so she can at least spread her arms when she gets out of the shower!

So, while I'm waiting to accumulate blue shirt style cotton fabrics, I moved on to the tee shirts. I started cutting up anything that was bright in color (and some dark to mix in with it) and was headed for the Goodwill bag. Once again, they were cut into 1 inch strips and if you look at the tutorial .... I cut the slits in these while they are still on the cutting mat so they are all ready to hitch together when I've got a moment to sit and crochet.

This hook is a size M or 9.00mm hook. I've used the same hook for both rugs. Although I was really looking to make a rug that was more square ....

it isn't ending up square or even a squared off rectangle. Rather a longer oval shaped rug. While at the cabin, I was crocheting in a way that made the rug look different from different sides. Makes sense? Jeannette showed me how to do it differently, so this one should be completely reversible. It is all double crocheted which makes me go through strips of fabric much faster, gives me wider rows and allows me to get a rug done quicker ... if I have time to sit and play with it.

I don't know where these things are going to end up, but I figure rugs are like quilts. One can never have enough of them ... and they feel downright homey. Log cabin with the wood fire burning homey. And why not recycle those shirts that are sitting in your drawer not being worn? They'll be nice and thick under the toes ... nearly luxurious!