Hula Hoop Woven Rugs

One of our co-ops is making these but, they are making them on a week we can't go so we made ours at home.  We found the directions at Family Fun but, found that for a few things that worked for them didn't for us so we will show how we did it here.

 

The rug is made out of old t-shirts and a hula hoop.  We only used four/five t-shirts per rug, they said 12.  Of course, our rugs were only four/five colors but, for the price difference, unless you have a lot of t-shirts and don't have to raid the Goodwill of all their $1.99 t-shirts, four colors was fine for us.  We wear our t-shirts working around here until they are pretty much dead and only good for cleaning, not beautiful rug making.

Starting at the bottom of the t-shirt cut about one inch horizontal strips to make large loops.  Crisscross 11 of the loops on around the hula hoop.  We used a size adult XL for this step so that the loops didn't stretch very far or I think when you took it off the hula hoop the loops will start to shrink back up and make the rugs lumpy or bowlish.  Push two of the loops together and treat them as one loop to give your rug and uneven number of spokes.  Attach a loop onto these two by wrapping it around the spokes and doubling it back on itself.

Do the same thing when you need to add another loop to the previous one for weaving.  Put the loop you are adding through the loop that you were already using.

Put the other end of the loop back through the loop

 

Pull it tight but only by the area where the knot will be.  You don't want to stretch out the loop because it becomes like a cord and again, over time, will probably start to shrink back up making your rug lumpy.

 

Weave over and under each spoke until the rug is 8 inches across.  Keep the weaving snug but not tight.

When it measures 8 inches across start weaving between the middle of the loops to give the rug more structure. When you get to the two warp spokes that you pushed together at the top of the loom, separate them. Treat one of the spokes as two individual strips, but continue to treat the other as a single spoke.  This continues to give you a odd number of spokes.  If you don't do this, by the time you get around to where you started going between the spokes you won't be able to do every one over under any more, they will be the same as the round before them.  This means tearing the round out and starting over - don't ask how we know this.

This is Dancer's rug.  When she got about 5-6 inches from the edge of the hoop she cut the loop she was weaving with, tied to the row before the one she was weaving and wove the ends into the rug.

Then cut each loop and tie it in a square knot before cutting the next one.

Spark's rug.  Since this was our second one and we knew what we were doing it only took about an hour and half from the cutting of the loops to the finished rug.

The thing that amazed me the most about Spark's rug is how many sound effects there are for weaving.  First, it was dolphins diving over and under the waves,  then there was dive bombing, driving over and under and whole plethora of ones I'm not even sure what they were.  No one can tell me boys and girls are the same.