tributesinwood

A Colourful Rug

Well, that was fun…I’ll be sure to carve and paint a braided rug again.  Maybe I’ll even make a real braided rug in the future!

The rugs themselves are made of multi-coloured strands of cloth.  The rug that I “carved” is modelled after a three cloth braiding pattern and also has three distinct colour sections: an outer dark blue/light blue/red section, a middle light blue/beige/yellow section, and a centre yellow/light green/dark green section.  I say that I “carved” the rug in quotations because the strands were actually carved into the base with a parting chisel ( looks like a “V” ) and the individual braids were burned in with the tip of a wood-burning tool.

Having the burned-in channels of the braid were really helpful in the painting, as the paint was confined to the burned boundaries and was not able to bleed into the adjoining sections.  So, everything looks nice and crisp.

I should mention that the sections where no braiding is evident is where the rocking chair rails will fit and be glued.  I felt that I needed a bit of a depression ( which won’t be seen after the chair is in place ) so that the rocking chair rails had a good surface for which to adhere.

Next step…fastening and gluing the rocking chair to the base.