It is the beginning of December and once again the school has gone into lockdown due to the Corona virus. Unfortunately we can't go to school to continue our studies, so for this next course in our curriculum we have to chose something that can be made at home.
This landed up being a blessing in disguise for me. I knew immediately what I would make. I have for years wanted to make a ryijy. While we still lived in Canada I had looked into ordering a ryijy kit from Finland and making one. Unfortunately the cost of these kits was astronomical. The kit with pattern and wool were approx. $1200 -1500 Canadian dollars. So, now I would have the opportunity to design it myself and make it, and I had a customer who had wanted one, and who conveniently was my husband.
I spent weeks going over pictures and ideas on pinterest, and even joined a Ryijy Club on facebook. I got many wonderful ideas from both these places. So, slowly I started making a collage of pictures that we liked, and that would suit the home.
We finally decided on a pattern, colours, and size. I then went about making drawings of the pattern ideas. After one was chosen, I started making small samples of the ryijy. The customer had to decided what length he wanted the "pile" to be and how dense he wanted it.
I also looked into different types of materials to use for the base of the ryijy. I had originally wanted to purchase a pre made ryijypohjakangas that had been made specifically for this purpose.Unfortunately the cost of the material would cost between 150 -200 €. As this was going to be the first ryijy that I make, and have no experience in making one, I felt that it was too costly to use as a "guinea pig". The wool I landed up choosing for the ryijy was regular wool used in making socks and mittens. The wool count of this was 75% and 25 % acrylic the cost per 100 gr was $3.75. The reason I chose the sock wool rather than "ryijy wool" was the cost. Each 120 gr ball was going to cost between 8-13€. As I had stated earlier, with this being my first ryijy, I tried to keep the costs down as much as possible.....Now I know why the ryijy kits was so expensive.
So, with all these decisions made,the decided size was going to be 100x 140 cm ,the colours are natural white, grey, dark grey and black.
Below you will see the sample patterns that I drew and made. I decided not to put all the different choices we had to chose from, and all the drawing that I made. You will get a good ideas of the process that I went through.
The drawing below was the one that was chosen from all the pictures I drew and submitted to my customer.
The sample to the left is one that I am making for the customer to see. At the same time I got some experience of what kind of base material to chose from when making the ryijy. There are alot of different thickness and density in burlap. This one was to dense and thick. It was really hard to sew on.
Here is the completed sample. The customer was very pleased with how it looked. Other than changing the pile length which he wanted to be longer everything was satisfactory.
These are the wool colours chosen for the ryijy.
This picture to the left is a material that is made specifically for hand sewed ryijy's. Unfortunately the cost of this is 119€ per metre and I needed a 140cm. So, with this option the customer decided on the cheaper material which would be burlap.
The picture to the right is the burlap, which works fine but you have to hand pull the string out of every 5 cm of burlap. You do this because you need more space for the wool pile to be sewn in. This piece of burlap came to under 10 €.
To my left is the ryijy lanka that is typically used for making a ryijy. It is more durable and is 100% wool. Unfortunately it is expensive and costs 9.90€ per 120 gr. When you need 25 balls of wool, the costs add up quickly.
This is 7 Veljestä knitting wool that I wrote about.
The reason this wool is not used for ryijys is because it u weaves from the twist easier, and mattes easier.
I presented these different options to my customer and it was decided that we will give it a try. This ryijy will hang on the wall, and no one is going to be walking on it, so it should be just fine.
Here I am now starting to make the actual pattern that I will be following for the ryijy.
In this picture to your right I am figuring out the spaces between the coloured piles.
I finally completed my actual pattern that I will be following for the ryijy.
In these two pictures I first drew the lines where I am going to be sewing, and I also marked off every 5 cm of this area. If you look closely at the picture to my left you can see where I have started to pull out the "weft" threads to give me more space to sew the ryijy.
This process took me three days to do. It was a long process to do this, so if you are looking for a cheap cost affective method this would be it, but if you are charging your customer for the hours worked on ryijy, this is going to cost the customer more up front cost, but the customer will save on hourly costs.
Finally.... all the pre planning and prepping for the ryijy is over. I can finally start to make this project.
In the above picture you can see the tools needed for this project. I have my hand drawn pattern to follow, and I have my sample piece to help me see the goal.
In the picture to your right you can see the marking I have. I have also marked off every 10 cm across the rug. That helped me to follow the pattern I had made.
When I first started making the ryijy. One row took me one hour to do, but as time went on I found that I could sew it faster. On average it took about 45 minutes per row ( the rows are 100 cm wide). I decided that I would sew 5 rows per day. It took alot of determination to sit and work on it that long every day.I found my back and shoulders were getting tired of the hunched position. For that reason I took a break once a row was done and spent this time to stretch and walk around.
In the picture to your right you can see the spaces in between each row. It wasn't the 5 cm space gap that I had originally planned for, but it still worked. The ryijy was not to full looking in the end.
The ryijy is coming along fine. Fortunately I had a beautiful view outside to gaze on occationally.
Here is a picture of the back side of the ryijy. It is very important that the back is as neat as the front side.
I am really liking the way the ryijy is turning out.
Also a bonus is that I absolutely love making it. It is something that I am going to seriously get into.
To the right you can see that I have reached the half way point in making the ryijy. So far it has taken me 3 weeks to get to this point.
I am staying on schedule. I promised the customer that it would be ready in 6 weeks.
What I had failed to mention earlier is that after each row is sewed I cut them open. Some people don't do it that way. They leave the cutting part to the very end. For a" newbie" in this ryijy making I found that cutting after each row worked well for me.
As I am approaching the last few rows of sewing the ryijy, I found that it was so heavy that it kept sliding off the table. So I invented a way to hold it in place while I sew. It worked fabulously.
Once my ryijy was complete I had to sew s binding tape to support the rod once it is put hanging on the wall.
After the binding tape I sewed the side seams down on the backside of the ryijy. To sew the seams I used the strings that I had pulled from the weft. Nothing got wasted.
Here is the back view of the completed ryijy. It looks so neat and tidy.
In the above picture if you look at the bottom right hand corner you can see the hand embroidered name of the designer and maker of the ryijy. Also you can see the date to was made.The name of the ryijy is called " etäisyys". I chose this name for the ryijy ( which by the way it is common to name your ryijy) because I made it while I was etänä from my school and classmates. ( etäisyys means distance in english)
Above is a picture of the ryijy in the customers home. I feel it fits very well into the furniture style and decor of the home.
It sits very nicely on the wall that it was designed for. The customer was very happy with the ryijy as was I.
One " satisfied" customer.. ( and designer)
