Tabriz bear rug

Tabriz bear rug full image

How many drinks do you need to pay $1,800 for it?

Actually…if a rug is damaged, has little resale value, and cannot be safely used in its current condition, it is nice to be able to give it a “new life” in a different format. Pillows, wall hangings,…I’ve just never seen Bear Rug before as a way to recycle a rug.

But what about this weird one…a rug in Puerto Rico, made from…

Can you get the smoke odor out of this?

…discarded cigarette butts!!!

Close up shot - KOOL!!! (bad pun...I know...)

It is unbelievable what some people will create and call art.

If you ever come across rugs like these, I call them simply “Weird Rugs” – then here’s some how-to suggestions on how to clean them (but, truly, you won’t be able to get the smoke odor out of that rug…):

Cleanfax – Weird Funky Rugs You never know what you are going to come across…that’s what I love about this business – always something NEW to surprise you.

- Lisa

P.S. Those of you who are professional rug cleaners, two topics of interest to you, some current industry politics that is affecting the rug cleaning industry…and shows that even in our little world of rug cleaning, we have political pollution. Surprise, surprise…

They are “certified” – they hired the southern contingent rug training duo to teach them the IICRC course – so they were able to memorize the facts to pass the test… and they bought the products the instructors were selling… but it appears that perhaps they did not come away with “knowing” and understanding proper rug care in terms of heavy equipment on more fragile rugs.

For one thing… they mentioned the rug had already been properly “pit” cleaned by their instructors’ process.

Here’s a shot of one area – that by the way still STINKS:

The "clean" rug from the competitor still stinks.

Using a pit for cleaning is WAY better than surface cleaning with other methods (portable or truck mount) – but when you are dealing with a rug with dyes that are NOT colorfast, and you are NOT knowledgeable about how to clean rugs in that circumstance, then you do it too quickly from fear – and it does not come out being free of the contaminants… which is why this rug still smells.

There is still dog urine in it.

This company does a good volume of rugs, always has, but their target market is more those who are looking for the cheapest rug cleaning, versus the best care for the rugs. There’s a difference.

Some rugs are very inexpensive and the owners are not looking for specialists. They have a coupon. But sometimes people who have valuable rugs may not know it.  So though this company handles a lot of the commodity rugs out there, they do get “real” oriental rugs through their doors, and some of these we see…sometimes after things have gone wrong.  We get their “uh-oh’s.”

And this one was indeed an uh-oh… but not from the pee-pee.

Take a look:

This Turkish rug was brought in with several very large tears in it.  It is a strong woven rug, and we pulled on the torn areas to see if it was weak from dry rot or any other reason – nope, it was strong as can be.

But all of these torn areas…?!?  So my mother asked what happened, and their technician answered…

“It was BADGERED.”

Now, the Rug Badger is a dusting machine that BEATS the heck out of a rug to pound dirt out of it. This makes the wash process more thorough…but you have to be VERY careful with using this equipment on textiles.

The straps turn around and beat and beat, and it can pull up the edge of a rug, and BAM – this happens:

Long tears along the bottom half of the rug.

Now… my mother can repair this. It will take a bit of work, because it is 7 tears all along the bottom, each about a foot in length, but the cuts are clean cuts.

But what makes me mad is that these technicians feel confident about handling woven oriental rugs, because they have an IICRC patch, when they are simply not ready to be handling hand-woven rugs with very limited book-learning knowledge.

They provide inexpensive in-home cleaning of wall-to-wall carpet, but they believe in a few days of a sit-down test that they can now be “oriental rug specialists.” They in fact advertise this service (as do many carpet cleaning companies who specialize in in-home wall-to-wall carpeting but not natural fiber woven rugs).

I don’t fault them for trying to make more money by offering more services to their customers, and actually, there are more rugs to clean than skilled rug cleaners – so it’s a good specialty to get trained in.

It’s just if they are going to do a SPECIALIZED service, they should spend some time to REALLY learn it.

There is a myth in the rug cleaning industry – and in cleaning wall-to-wall carpet – that it is ALL about the equipment you use.

But in reality, it is the PERSON behind the equipment that is more valuable.

I can take a bucket of shampoo, some vinegar, and some hand brushes, and because I understand textiles and their care VERY well… I could out-clean a rug versus a person with a fully mechanized rug plant with hundreds of thousands in equipment.

In fact, this weekend in Las Vegas, I build a very rudimentary wash pit, and cleaned one of the most dangerous rug bleeders out there – a bright red Afghan wool rug – and did an excellent job with tools that were not made for “rugs.” But with the right cleaning solutions to stabilize the dye, the right shampoo, and keeping an eye on the process, several students and I got that rug washed and dried and looking fabulous.

Anyone else, with no understanding of the basics of rug cleaning, would have ruined that rug.

Why could I with low-tech tools be able to out clean a high-tech operation?

Because I understand what I am working on, and I have the attention to detail that would make the difference. A big difference.

It’s like the difference between running your car through the $7 car wash at Chevron, and getting a $200 mobile car detailing where every inch inside and out is sparkling.

This rug disaster is a crime.

It’s what happens when you put good equipment with bad training and give them a good rug to clean.

This is not the Badger’s fault – it is the operator’s fault. He should have been more aware that a soft woven rug like this could not take the beating.

I shouldn’t complain, because it’s a rug repair invoice, so it’s technically “business”… but it just irks me that these classes taught by instructors who have NEVER run a successful rug cleaning operation can mislead their students into thinking that EVERY rug is a piece of cake to clean, and that every piece of equipment can be equally applied to every rug.

There must be adjustments, and these adjustments come from understanding what you are working on, and predicting disasters BEFORE they happen.

For those of you who own Rug Badgers – please pay attention.  If you have a flexible wool rug, and you get too close to the edge, you run this risk here.

I personally do not have a Rug Badger in our plant, not because it is a bad piece of equipment – it can be a good time saver for smaller operations.  I just prefer the control of a Sanitaire vacuum, and it works well for us.  I’m not a big fan of aggressively beating natural fiber woven rugs.

I warn my students that sometimes this heavy equipment can risk structural damage. Besides this “badgering” – I have also seen the Centrifuge spinner unit split the backing foundation of a machine woven rug because it went too fast.

Just be careful and attentive. And ALWAYS check the foundation of the rugs closely for existing dry rot or structural problems BEFORE you beat the heck out of it.

- Lisa

I’ve been getting a few questions about rug repair, and my mother Kate and I recently spoke at the San Diego Weavers Guild meeting speaking specifically to rug repairs and our philosophies on them.

Here’s a simple little rug repair of field wear. Not reweaving, but selective embroidery stitching (to protect the original foundation fibers) and a little dye work to blend it in.

Field wear in an older Hamadan rug.

Tada! The Hamadan gets a facelift!

Several years ago we had a few sold-out hands-on rug repair clinics to train the basics of rug maintenance and specialty repairs. Not reweaving and reknotting rugs, but the most requested repairs: ends, sides, and field wear work (including patches).

After our presentation at this workshop we wondered – is it time to have some more Rug Repair Workshops?

So – if you are interested, let me know by posting down below in the COMMENTS. If there is enough interest then we will work together a curriculum, set some dates at our rug facility in San Diego, and let you know how to register.

Enjoy your weekend!

- Lisa

Fringe tape used to hold the fringe in place.

Yep – it’s tape. Tape used to hold the fringe tassels in place so you don’t have to keep straightening them.

Pros and cons of this. One – it does keep the fringe tassels, especially hefty fringe like on this Karastan rug, in place.

Cons – you can’t reuse the tape, it leaves residue (and a clean spot) where the adhesive was, and if the fringe tassels are weak with age or past bleaching, the tape will easily tear away those tassels.

On a machine woven rug like this one (you can see the machine work on the edges, and that this fringe is clearly added on after the fact) – torn away tassels are not a big deal. In fact, on this rug you can pull off the fringe entirely with your hands (no scissors required).

But on a hand woven rug – torn away tassels will lead to the rug unraveling and losing its value. This will need to be repaired quickly when this happens. Read about getting rug ends repaired right on this prior post.

So, if you HATE your fringe – do NOT cut the tassels off of an oriental rug. Just say no.

But, no worries, because you can hide the fringe. 

The poor-boy route is to simply use masking tape and tape the tassels under the rug. I choose masking tape because it has the least amount of adhesive, so you do not create a huge mess to clean up versus using packing tape or duct tape.

It’s not the ideal choice, but it’s an option that is much better than cutting off the tassels.

The other option is to hide the fringe professionally, with something that does not damage the tassels with adhesive, and keeps them clean in case you decide you suddenly LOVE fringe again.

We use at our rug shop a burlap material to do this. We sew it by hand at the base of the rug, and fold the tassels underneath the rug safely. Take a look on this Tibetan woven rug:

Customer wants the white fringe hidden from view.

Ready to fold the tassels under the rug, and sew to secure.

Abracadabra! The fringe has VANISHED!

Rug friends don’t let friends cut their rug fringe off… ever. Spread the word!

- Lisa

With hand woven rugs, when the fringe is torn or worn, the knots of the rug start to slide away and off.

You rug starts slowly shrinking, and gets shorter and shorter.  Like this:

This end is unraveling and losing its wool knots (back side view).

Once a knot has pulled loose, you cannot resecure it… it is lost FOREVER.

That’s why when your fringe gets VERY short, you need to pay attention.

The value of your rug is in those tiny little knots. You want to keep them in tact. But sometimes when you try to do good and grab some wool and thread, you might actually cause more damage than good.

Fringe is too short on this rug, this repair won't hold.

This rug has fringe that is way too short, and you can see someone’s attempt to tie off the tassels is actually sliding off, and pulling some knots with it.  Too little too late.

An attempt at darning the edge is doing nothing to secure this rug.

Another attempt at trying to use a whip stitch to darn this end is doing no good either. By pulling that thick wool through the foundation to try to hold the edge together, the person has actually loosened those rows of knots and this edge will pull apart sooner as a result.

Good intentions, bad results.

Sometimes you take your rug to someone who decides that using an industrial serging machine to machine repair the edge is a good option. This also is a very BAD choice.

Do not machine repair a hand woven rug. It damages the rug, and it's ugly.

This is heartbreaking… a sewing machine happy idiot decided to machine repair a hand woven rug. Not only is the color choice ugly, but this type of machine work causes structural damage to the rug that cannot be reversed.

The reason hand woven rugs are repaired by hand is so that the Rug Repair Specialist can slip the needle around, and inbetween the foundation fibers (warps and wefts).

A serging machine does not go around fibers – it powers right through them, over and over and over again.

Over time these repairs will tear away, and pull away inches of the rug that could have been saved if it had been repaired by hand.

If you are talking about an investment textile, the more inches you lose, the more value you lose. Simple as that.

When this machine repair tears away, the rug will need to be reduced further to provide enough warp length to anchor a solid repair with. (Remember those VERY short fringe tassel stubs up top in photo #2? You need more length than that to hold a good end repair in place.)

What does a good end repair look like? There are several styles, but this is my favorite – an overcast stitch:

Properly executed end repair overcast stitch. Strong and long lasting.

Your stitch should use a strong upholstery thread that will not get brittle over time. Your stitch should vary now and then to lower weft threads so that the tension of the stitch is evenly distributed so it will not unnecessarily pull the edge loose.  Your buttonhole stitch, flat along the top, should be close to the outermost weft thread to hold the edge tightly in place.

Many rug repair facilities, like ours, guarantee their overcast repairs for the life of the rug. This is because, when it is done properly, it should never need to be done again.

Now… if your vacuum cleaner sucks up and tears off the edge, that is a different matter. There are no guarantees to help someone not paying attention.

If you have a hand woven rug, and the edge is unraveling, make sure the repair is done by hand.

If you have a rug cleaning facility, and want to know some rug repairs that you can do without having to be trained by a rug repair specialist, be sure to opt-in for the Simple Rug Repairs Report I’ve made available. The opt-in box is at the top of this blog, over to the right. Enjoy!

- Lisa

Some rug owners LOVE it… most rug cleaners HATE it. Why all the drama?

Well, it starts with the fact that when the rug is brand new, it tends to have the bright white, immaculate cotton fringe. It just looks so… NEW.

When rug owners send their rugs off for a professional cleaning, the fringe tassels are usually gray and dirty, and they want them that brand new white again.

But that white is just not natural. And it never was. Just like those Hollywood smiles you see (despite their daily coffee intake) – those pearly whites just don’t happen naturally. They are enhanced, with hydrogen peroxide and other bleaching agents.

That fantastic white fringe is also “enhanced” – and as you know when you repeatedly use chlorine bleach on cotton t-shirts, it will yellow, and it will tear and become brittle. And with fringe this means, the tassels simply begin to break and tear off from foot traffic or your vacuum cleaner – like this:

Repeatedly bleached fringe will begin to tear off.

The use of bleaching agents, or hydrogen peroxide, is a common mistake made by both unskilled cleaners and rug owners to try to “clean up” the look of fringe.

Unfortunately bleach is not a cleaning agent. You need to use actual cleaning solutions and some good old elbow grease to remove soil from fringe. Most don’t have the patience to do it correctly, so they are looking for the quick fix - which is why they grab the bleach.

But think about it… if you had heavily soiled shoelaces (also cotton), and you threw it in your washing machine with hot water and a lot of bleach – how would they turn out?

I’ll give you a hint… TERRIBLE.

To get them clean you need to soak them, scrub them, use some detergent to get them looking decent. And getting them to look like brand new again, when they have been beat up for years? That’s a tough job for anyone.

That is the state that many rugs left without a cleaning for longer than a few years gets to, with VERY dirty fringe. And the owners expect a miracle. This is why many rug cleaners hate fringe. And for the less experienced of them, they may grab that bleach to try to create a shortcut to a great look.

However, many do not realize that the bleaching of the fringe done before the rug was even sold, by the manufacturer, can sometimes create deterioration of those cotton fringes that can quickly worsen with future attempts to “whiten” them.

One country notorious for aggressive whitening of fringe is China – you may recognize their distinctive fringe type here (every country finishes their fringe off in a particular way):

Chinese rugs tend to develop yellowed and weak fringe tassels over time.

I personally am not very fond of fringe, especially long fringe tassels. Sometimes I think it would be nice to just get some scissors and cut those strands clean off… but then I have to stop myself.

You see the fringe tassels are actually the warp foundation fibers of a hand-woven rug. This means cutting them off is a huge NO-NO, because the rug will unravel.

Fringe tassels are the foundation fibers of a woven rug.

The better option is to hide the fringe behind the rug. To either use masking tape to hold it underneath the rug (masking leave little adhesive on the cotton), or to use a strip of material to hold the tassels under the rug and cover them up so they stay in good shape.

Hiding the fringe also means they do not have to be continually bleached to make WHITE again, and then they don’t break off and risk the rug knots pulling away and letting the rug unravel.

Hand-woven rugs made well should last several lifetimes. They should outlive us, and our kids, and our grandkids.

Let’s help make that happen by keeping the bleach away from them.

- Lisa

These rugs are braided. Fabric strips braided into long braids, and then crafted into a rug like this one:

Braided rug from America

Many are very sturdy rugs, but some of the older ones can pose some problems for both rug owners and rug cleaners. Here are a few items to check for:

Rug dye problems. You want to test the dyes of your rug to see if they are not colorfast. If you own the rug and a damp cloth shows dye transfer, then you will want to be careful what type of surface you place the rug on top of as dye may transfer onto other surfaces.  If you are nervous about a vibrant braided rug being on top of light colored wall-to-wall carpeting, then use a pad underneath as a barrier between the rug and the carpeting. (Rugs are meant to be placed on HARD surfaces, so this is only if you have no choice but placing it over a soft flooring.)

If you are a rug cleaner, and the dyes are highly fugitive, then instead of giving the rug a proper wash, you will be forced to lessen the amount of water during the cleaning and treat the rug as you would tricky upholstery and use a tool such as the Drimaster tool to clean, rinse, and immediately extract the cleaning solutions.

Rug braid filler threads. Sometimes the inside of the braids are supported with filler materials to make the braids more stiff. These filler materials, if they are dyed, may create “bleeding” problems when wet. You will want to open up the braids a bit and see of this filler material exists. This is a blurred photo – but this is what the filler material can look like:

Cut braid with filler material inside.

Broken braids. With especially older braided rugs, the thread holding the braids along side of one another can weaken and break. This ends up making the rug fall apart. If you own the rug, tripping on broken areas can make the problem worse, and if the rug is given a bath, moving the rug around can create more and more broken areas.

Braided rug coming unraveled.

The problem of broken connecting threads needs to be addressed BEFORE the cleaning process as it will become worse. If the rug is heavily soiled however, hand sewing the braids together will not be possible (it’s unsanitary to the rug repair specialists to be handling and breathing in the contaminants in a heavily soiled rug).

In this case, you can sandwich the rug between two plastic screens, sew these screens to one another to press the rug tightly inside of them, and then soak the rug, scrub, and rinse the rug as that “braided rug sandwich.” Then after complete drying it can be repaired.

When you send a braided rug off for repair, be sure to make sure they use very strong upholstery thread for those connecting threads so that you do not have to have the rug repaired yet again in a few more years.

These are colorful and fun rugs – and the older ones have some great stories attached to them. Just be sure to inspect them very carefully before cleaning so that you do not create any unexpected problems.

- Lisa