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The Big Brother™ Rug

rainbow colored butterfly loom rugcloseup of the butterfly join
as seen on the 2nd season of Australian Big Brother

I’ve added two versions of the rug, the really huge one from the show which is made with the small butterfly loom, and a smaller version made with the medium butterfly loom.

The image on the left shows the completed rug, while the image on the right shows the looped pile on the right side of the rug.

Big Rug (an exact recreation of the Big Brotherâ„¢ rug!)

Size:

Approximately 2.5 metres square (about 8 1/3 feet square). That’s more than big enough for a lounge room rug or queen size bedspread!

Materials

Small Butterfly Loom (17 x 17cm) You can buy one from The Butterfly Loom at http://www.thebutterflyloom.com, along with instructions on how to use it.

Yarn:
20 balls each of Panda Magnum 100% acrylic Courtelle in colours
Red: Geranium Colour # 307
Orange: Orange Colour # 378
Yellow: Gold Colour # 336
Green: Veridant Colour # 320
Blue: Saxe Colour # 310

Note: These amounts are approximate. To make sure you have enough yarn make squares until you have used up a whole ball of yarn and use this number to work out how many balls you’ll need to complete your rug.

For a pastel coloured rug you could replace these colours with Pink/305, Blue-White/303, Lemon-White/324, Apple-White/306 and White/301

Pattern:

Using the small size loom, make 193 red squares
228 orange squares
225 yellow squares
123 green squares and
192 blue squares and sew them together following the diagram, sewing the edge knots on adjacent squares to each other and leaving the free loops on the front of your work.

chart for the rainbow big brother rug

Small Rug

(Note: Because you’re using a larger loom, the shag pile on this rug is not as dense as the large rug).

Size:

Approximately 1.2 metres square (about 4 feet square). That’s a great size for a small floor rug or snuggle blanket.

Materials

Medium Butterfly Loom (22 x 22cm) You can buy one from The Butterfly Loom at http://www.thebutterflyloom.com, along with instructions on how to use it.

Yarn:

5 balls each of Panda Magnum 100% acrylic Courtelle in colours
Red: Geranium Colour # 307
Orange: Orange Colour # 378
Yellow: Gold Colour # 336
Green: Veridant Colour # 320
Blue: Saxe Colour # 310

Note: These amounts are approximate. To make sure you have enough yarn make squares until you have used up a whole ball of yarn and use this number to work out how many balls you’ll need to complete your rug.

For a pastel coloured rug you could replace these colours with Pink/305, Blue-White/303, Lemon-White/324, Apple-White/306 and White/301

Pattern

Using the medium size loom, make 20 red squares
24 orange squares
23 yellow squares
13 green squares and
20 blue squares and sew them together following the diagram, sewing the edge knots on adjacent squares to each other and leaving the free loops on the front of your work.

chart for the larger big brother rug


Photos and Pattern copyright © 2002 Southern Star Endemol Pty Limited, appearing on Knitting-and.com with permission.
Also, much thanks goes to Carolyn Jenner of The Butterfly Loom for supplying the extra information I needed to figure out the exact pattern!