Butterfly Rug.

This was my third rag rug.  My first was a mixture of different fabrics, my second was made from t-shirt material, so I wanted my third to be something different.

I had seen a fellow rug makers work and among her mixture of fabrics, she had a little swish of velvet that shimmered.  I love it, and decided my next rug would be made totally from velvets.

I also wanted a different design. As I also play with stained glass, I thought I would see if I could transfer a stained glass type pattern, to a rug.

I hand-drew the butterflies on the back of the rug, but this left a large background area which I thought would be  to plain if done in one colour, on the other hand I didn't want to have too much going on in the background as it might detract the eye from the butterflies.  I decided on smoky type swirls in two shades of silvery grey.

I was plodding (or should I say, prodding?) along quite nicely when one of the ladies that run the rag-rug club I go to asked if I could get it finished by the 10th Jan, so it could go in an exhibition at our local Museum and Art Gallery.  At this point it was only half done, but I was so pleased to be asked because I am quite a new member and they only wanted four rugs in total for the space they had.

So, this last week has been a MAD prodding frenzy, cutting, poking, ordering new velvet, stressing....

But today, I finally got it finished.  Had a little hiccup in that I ran out of the light silver material, so had to unpick some bits and re-jig the swirls a bit, but we got there.

This is the front view, how it will be displayed....

And this is the back, it looks much more defined this way I think.

Quite pleased with it....... on Tuesday I will say goodbye to it for three months, unless I decide to pop into the art gallery and visit it of course  :)