What makes a good yarn for weaving rugs? Bobbie has been exploring different breeds of wool in her rug making. Sometimes she processes and spins her own rug yarns but it’s always nice when she can find a commercial product that provides the characteristics she’s looking for. Recently, some surprising Vancouver Island Icelandic wool yarn has made the grade.
by Bobbie Williams
As some people know, my weaving “niche” is the making of rugs. I love to create functional cloth (coverings) for both the floor, the wall and the bed. I am also a spinner and usually process and spin my own yarns, but I keep an eye out for commercial yarns from Canadian mills.
For non-weavers out there, woven cloth is an interplay between the warp (vertical yarns) and the weft (horizontal yarns). For rug creation, selecting which yarn will be the warp and which will be the weft, and how tightly to pack them, is critical.
I usually weave my rugs using a boundweave technique. The warp yarn, which is totally covered by the weft, provides the underlying (“hidden”) structure. I use linen or cotton, but a strong wool yarn is also feasible. (Recently, during the Vancouver Island Fibreshed Rug Challenge, several rugs were submitted using blue plastic baling twine as the warp!) I use wool yarn for the weft, and it is packed tightly over the warp. It is the weft that provides the colour, design and texture to the rug.
I provide this background because of a recent adventure into the selection of a commercial weft yarn. When weavers think of rug “wools” usually they are looking for sturdy wools which have been spun and plied tightly. (Soft-to-the-skin wools are lovely for garments, but my experience is that they don’t stand up to people walking over them.) We are lucky, though, that the Fibreshed is home to sheep that produce the perfect wool for my purposes. Sometimes, though, it is a challenge for me to find it already spun into yarn.
Serendipitously, I came across just such yarn the other day. I was chatting with a member of the Fibreshed, and she mentioned that a farmer (Alexa Boulton of Somerset Farm on Gabriola Island) had a good supply of Icelandic yarn spun up softly by Custom Woolen Mills. Now, Icelandic can be good for rugs, but I would normally spin it tightly. A soft-spun did not seem like a good fit for my purposes. However, the way it was described intrigued me. So, I contacted the farmer, and soon 12 pounds of this yarn were on their way from Gabriola Island to Victoria.
I have started sampling with the Somerset Yarn, and it is working beautifully. The soft-spun nature of the yarn allows the strands to pack down tightly and to cover the warp yarns very well. Stay tuned for how the rug progresses! In the meantime, I have now added Somerset Farm to my list of Fibreshed providers who can meet my fibre needs!
