Craft and Design by Rosie Preston: Rug Tufting

All presented work had to be left in our work spaces for a week which meant that we were unable to work at our desks until the following week. I therfore felt very smug about having booked myself in to use a rug tufting frame. I had previously learnt rug tufting in my first year and created a small doormat sized rug. Therefore this year I hoped to create a larger piece. I worked directly from my images of burns. My first rug only used a quarter of the frame space. In this design I used up to three colours at a time throught the nozzle. This created a speckled effect which worked well with my imagery and the blending of colours.

For my next rug I used a long thin strip from a grayscale photocopy. This rug was significantly larger. I tried to match my colours to those in the photocopy, however I struggled to find the exact colours within the supply uni has. I found that the dark grey had a hint of khaki, the palest grey had a hint of cream and there was no bleached white which led to me using silk. Silk was really awkward to use. It kept slipping through the nozzle and entwining itself around the blade. It was also quite a strong yarn and did not cut cleanly. I persevered with the silk as once tufted it gave a lovely irridescent and soft finish... even if there was a hint of pink within there...