My last post showed a rug that was damaged by not being attentive with a piece of dusting equipment on a Turkish rug.

The technician had not been careful with a heavy piece of equipment, and paid the price.

He was not trained by his instructors on how to keep from letting that happen when you are not paying attention to what you are doing. (See in the comments of that thread how to use Tyvek to protect from that damage.)

In the same week I was sent a photo of this nice wool rug that a professional cleaner bled.

Front side - red dyes have bled.

Back side - red dyes have bled.

Now…if there is ONE thing I’d like you to take away from this post, it is this:

HIGH HEAT IS BAD FOR WOOL RUGS!

(It’s also bad for silk, FYI.)

Think about your clothing for a minute…how many items do you wash in HOT water, and put in a HOT dryer?

Some, I know… but most, no.

Why?

Because many of the fibers – especially NATURAL fibers – have a problem with that. Loss of color, shrinking, loss of finishing and texture.

When was the last time you took your nice wool sweater and washed it in HOT water, and dried it on HIGH heat?

Now, wool rugs are different from wool fabrics in construction – but many of the characteristics, and risks, are the same.

And with this rug, the cleaner had two runners to clean. He used an approved WoolSafe shampoo, dye stabilizing solution, wash pit set-up, and truck mount with a water claw as well.

First rug – no problem.

Second rug, as the heat kicked in on his truck mount (he had set it low to begin with, and it increased over time)… suddenly a problem. The dyes bled. Despite the dye stabilizing solution.

He was working under two false assumptions here:

1) That dye stabilizing solutions “set” dyes indefinitely. They don’t. They give you a window of opportunity to clean, and if you have a rug with dyes that are not colorfast, that window is VERY small. You gotta wash it quick.

2) That HEAT is okay for wool. For oriental rugs, it is not. One of the reasons I test a rug’s dye strength with a HOT water test is because I want to know IMMEDIATELY if there is any chance at all a rug will bleed on me. I wash with cold, but I test with hot – to be safe. Sometimes rugs can bleed right away…sometimes it takes some time, so you need to know what you are working with, and use the right solutions to strengthen the dye-fiber bond during your thorough wash process.

Now…this professional cleaner was told by one of his instructors that wool is okay at up to 140 degrees of heat, so he was not worried…until it bled that is.

This was an IICRC-instructor who told him this. An instructor who is not a rug cleaner, but apparently gives some advice on rugs. I’m not sure why.

But, you see, with wool wall-to-wall installed carpeting, using heat to clean is commonplace. But generally you will not find in a home, installed wool carpeting with bright reds, blues, and other vivid acid dyes as you will with oriental rugs, or specialty fine fabrics.

In the latest cover story of Cleanfax Magazine, I mention several things that this post is focusing on: 1) the shortcomings in today’s training in the fields of rug cleaning and upholstery cleaning, and 2) that I believe someone well-trained in upholstery and fine fabric care would be a BETTER oriental rug cleaner than someone well-trained in residential carpet cleaning.

Here’s the article, which I co-authored with Jim Pemberton (an expert in upholstery and fine fabric care):

Cleanfax – Sept 2010 Cover

Homes with nice investment-grade textiles on their floors, almost always also have investment-grade fabric on their furnishings. They go hand in hand.

And with fine furnishings, or oriental rugs, there needs to be an EXCELLENT eye and hand for testing and inspection. Fiber tests, dye tests, construction identification, and inspecting for any pre-existing conditions that might hamper your cleaning results…or lead to a cleaning disaster. You need to be able to spot these BEFORE they become problems.

Something shared with a client before cleaning is EDUCATION, and after cleaning is an EXCUSE.

The more time you put into the front end with your attention to detail, the less you will spend on the back end trying to clean up a mess, or pay for one.

There is a serious shortcoming in our training today, at least in these specialty niches of oriental rugs and fine fabrics.

My hope is that making a post like my previous one (showing how a Rug Badger could damage a rug if you are NOT careful), and this one (showing how a mistaken belief about heat not being bad, and dye stabilizer being a “fix”), will help keep anyone in the rug cleaning world to be just a little bit more attentive to what they are doing.

This might be a 1 in 100 chance of happening to a rug cleaner…but I can tell you…being that one that it does happen to, really sucks.

Just ask the guys who handled these recent rug disasters.

Hope you enjoy the article!

- Lisa

Enjoy the article!

- Lisa

Cleanfax – Weird Funky Rugs

Now…tufted rugs are of course not new to retail shops. I’m sure you’ve seen them, rugs with a material backing, like this:

Tufted rug - cloth backing.

Tufted rugs are what I refer to as FAKE rugs, because they are a cheaper, quicker way to create the look of a woven rug without the quality and longevity of a real woven rug.

Tufted rugs are essentially hooked rugs, looped into a cotton mesh, then latex is poured over the back to glue the fibers in place. They most of the time cover the back with a cloth, because the latex is ugly and can sometimes crumble or yellow the floor/carpeting underneath it. Then they shear off the top loops so it is straight fibers like a “real” rug.

Tufted rugs by and large are cheaply made, and have a life of several years, versus decades (or centuries) like quality hand woven wool rugs.

A real hand woven rug can take months - or years - to craft.

I am a fan of real rugs – WOVEN rugs. Especially wool rugs.

That said, most consumers do not know the difference, and many buy tufted rugs, so you need to know how to clean them.

Because tufted rugs have a lot of corners cut to allow them to sell for cheaper prices, you have a number of concerns:

1) The latex, if poor quality, can crumble and the face fibers can pull loose during vacuuming or cleaning.

2) The designs, if stenciling is used that is INK, can bleed out when wet and wick up to the top (this is a manufacturing flaw, because they should NOT be using ink to do this).

3) The latex, if it has gone bad and soured, can create a HORRIBLE odor (smells like a cross between dirty socks and rubber) that will get WORSE with any moisture from cleaning. If the rug is new, and smells, tell your client to RETURN the rug immediately to exchange for another one or to get their money back. This is flawed merchandise.

4) Because of the latex construction, these rugs can take up to 4 times as long to dry as woven rugs do. So you need to boost air movement and dehumification to boost your drying results for tufted rugs.

There are some other issues, but those are the biggies.

And I don’t want to imply ALL tufted rugs are crummy. There are some high-end, very nice tufted rugs, for example Edward Field’s rugs are VERY expensive wool tufted rugs that are high quality.

Back to my story… I was sent a photo of a TUFTED rug with wool face fibers, but also SILK highlights throughout it. And the cleaner wanted to know any tips or concerns he should have. Here’s two photos of the rug in question:

Wool and silk tufted rug - front view

Wool and silk tufted rug - back corner

Now, considering this is a tufted rug, the odds of the highlights being good quality silk are not high. In fact, it is likely rayon or viscose or mercerized cotton (all used as artificial silk).

To determine if it is real silk versus fake silk, you take a tuft from the rug (use tweezers) and drop it in a small cup of fresh Chlorox bleach.

If it is real silk, it will begin to bubble and slowly dissolve.

If it is fake silk (mercerized cotton, or rayon/viscose which is cotton by-products), it will do nothing. By the way, rayon/viscose is the WORST fiber on the planet for rugs.

There are many high quality rugs from Persia, and China, that are hand woven wool oriental rugs with silk highlights around the floral designs. They are beautiful.

Silk is a natural protein fiber, like wool, and in these cases where the amount of silk is not large, you can follow the same guidelines you do for cleaning wool and safely clean the silk as well. Same shampoo, same dye stabilizing solutions, same vinegar rinse to remove the residue.

One difference is that the silk will get matted and stiff when fully dried, and this requires some grooming to loosen those fibers up again. Very slow hand brushing is required (similar to the grooming needed for velvet when it is cleaned, except you use a hand brush instead of a carding brush). This additional time needed is why it usually costs more to clean silk rugs than wool rugs, because more time is required. (By the way, grooming is required for FAKE silk also, so even cheap viscose rugs cost more to clean than wool rugs because it takes more time.)

With this tufted rug in particular, because these rugs are made quickly and not with the highest quality ingredients, I would pre-inspect for a few things. I would want to know: are the dyes colorfast? are the fibers strong or do they pull away easily? is there any stenciling? is the silk actually RAYON? is there any latex strong odor?

I would test the dyes. If they test colorfast, and the rug is fairly soiled, then I would wash the rug. Give it a bath.

If the dyes test as fugitive, then I would surface clean the rug with an upholstery tool section by section carefully, to clean it. I would use an Airpath air mover to speed dry.

I would test the fiber strength. If they test strong, and the rug is fairly soiled, then I would wash the rug.

If they test weak (easily pull away from the rug), then I would surface clean it with the upholstery tool, and if needed, place a screen over the rug sections as I clean them to keep fibers from being pulled away during extraction strokes.

I would inspect for stenciling. If I see none when I grin open the fibers to look, then I would wash the rug.

If I do see stenciling, and the rug is fairly soiled, I would STILL wash it… because the rug is dark and so ink bleeding out will not be visible on the front, but I would let the client know ink marks will show on the backing material. (Most clients don’t care what the back of the rug looks like, and I always prefer to give rugs a bath versus surface cleaning because it is the difference between taking a real bath or having a sponge bath.) Just in case the ink might bleed into the white silk highlights, I would use an Airpath to speed dry it.

I would test to see if the highlight fibers are RAYON instead of silk. If they are in fact rayon, then I know I need to be careful about scrubbing the rug, and to be extra careful when grooming after it’s dry. Rayon is a very weak fiber, and will break apart with even the gentlest cleaning.

I would pre-inspect for the horrible odor found in some tufted rugs. If the rug has that odor I would NOT CLEAN IT. This is a manufacturing flaw, tell the client to return it to the store they bought it at.

As long as you are VERY good at pre-inspection, and VERY good at carefully cleaning a rug, this should not be a problem rug to clean.

If you have any questions for me on this rug or others, please post them in the COMMENTS.

Thank you for reading the Rug Chick blog, I am always happy to see so many come to visit me here.

- 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

August 6-7 in Las Vegas at the Piranha Marketing Specialty Cleaning & Restoration Symposium. There are about a dozen seats left, so call 480-858-0008 and ask for Victoria. She will give you the details.

Jump on it, we are going to sell out… I didn’t even have to mail out a promotion to get this one sold, which is very flattering.

Here’s what’s really COOL about this event. I am team training with the one and only Jim Pemberton, who is the “guru” of fine fabric upholstery.  So you will learn how to handle investment rugs, as well as investment upholstery.

I don’t travel to teach very often with all of the other work on my plate… so when I do it, I do it BIG.  And Jim has never taught out in the “west” – so this will be a big deal for attendees, getting training from instructors who have actually run successful cleaning operations, and not just read about them in a book somewhere.

Plus, we are controversial… and a lot of FUN! Why have a business if you can’t have fun at it…?

Everyone coming to this workshop is going to be overwhelmed by the amount that they walk away KNOWING, not just hearing. We do not teach from a book, we teach from experience, and to make sure you know not only what to do but why.

Hope a few of my Rug Chick readers get in before it closes - I’d love to meet you in person!

- Lisa

P.S. The workshop is worth 2 IICRC continuing education credits, in case you need them.

Woven in America, made of high quality materials and construction. I’ve seen Karastans from the 1930′s still in very good condition.  In fact, we had an older one come through our shop a few weeks ago, and it had an interesting – and outdated – care tag on the back.  Right here:

Karastan rug care tag - be careful!

Here’s a blog I wrote over on our San Diego Rug Cleaning Company rug repair blog - with a point by point blow of the tag in question.

As Karastan has begun importing product from China, you can no longer say that it represents high quality in machine made product. For some unknown reason they have decided to create some blended rugs with wool and viscose, and as all frequent readers of The Rug Chick blog know – viscose is the worst rug fiber to ever choose for your home.

When you read the label description, let me know, was there anything in it that you were also surprised to see in print as “recommended instructions”? Am I the only one surprised?

- Lisa

P.S.  Heads up – rug cleaning workshop upcoming on August 6-7 - get your seat before it SELLS OUT!

Rug made of leather strips.

Couple things to know about these rugs if you are buying one, or are cleaning one:

1) Pets LOVE these. And there is a tendency to have pet puddles on them as a result.

2) Many have SIZING on them to make the strips of leather “stiff” – and this sizing is not permanent.

3) The colorful strips (reds, blues, and blacks typically) can bleed when given a wet wash.  Test for this.

So, if you do happen to have pets in the home, or the rug gets fairly dirty, you will need to get the piece washed to become clean again. This means the strips will likely become limper, and the overall rug not as “peppy” as when you first bought it.

If the rug does not have heavy soil because it is vacuumed regularly (on this type of tied-together strip construction, do not use a regular vacuum, I’d suggest a canister vacuum) – then a professional cleaner may opt to actually clean those strips of leather by hand with leather cleaning products.  This hand work will take a very long time, and would have a sizeable cost because of that labor.

Another interum way to “pep” the piece up is to take the rug, flip it upside down (with helpers), and shake the heck out of it.  (This also works fabulous for shaggy rugs like flokatis.)

This helps release grit, dust, and fuzzies that have lodged into the base of this rug, and will pep up the leather strips for a short time.

These rugs are kind of cool though. 

I would not use them in a high traffic area.  And, if I had pets, I’d probably not opt for this choice. The rugs are pricey to begin with, and having to wash it frequently because of pet accidents or dander odor, would make it an even pricier investment.

Just a few things to know before you buy one… or before you decide to clean one.

- Lisa

With an inexpensive tufted rug, this can be a blessing because it is protecting a much more valuable wood floor underneath it.

With an oriental rug (hand woven), this can be a curse because pet urine on a rug is one of the most dangerous spills on a textile – not only for the rug itself, but for the occupants if you allow the accidents to happen over and over.

With woven rugs, the foundation fibers are typically cotton. This means the wool fibers are tied around cotton warps. So pet urine (or vomit or #2) will penetrate the wool fibers – because this accident is hot and acidic – and will become absorbed by the cotton interior fibers. This means the accident you see is only the tip of the sewage iceburg.

This Chinese rug has much more urine absorbed within its foundation fibers.

Ideally, when you notice an accident has happened – you jump to action. These are your spills steps:

1) If there is anything to scoop up – scoop it up. Blot up what you can with a cotton towel.

2) Pour some club soda (or if you have no soda water – a 50/50 mixture of white vinegar and cool water) into a container. Use a sponge, wringing out the excess, and DAMPEN the affected area. Then blot with a cotton towel to pull out the urine or vomit or fecal matter.

3) Blot until you see nothing coming into the towel. Then take a hair dryer on warm (not hot) and dry the fibers. Ideally raise the rug up in this area so air flow is along both sides.

WARNINGS! If you see the rug dyes transfer into the towel, you need to stop getting the rug damp, and blot and dry as quickly as possible. If you get a woven rug too wet you will risk potential mildew and mold problems, so do not get the fibers WET, just damp. If you SCRUB wool instead of blot, you can potentially create fiber distortion/breaking.

The bigger problem with rugs comes when you allow repeated pet accidents on your rugs. The stains will be permanent, the odor strong, and long term exposure can lead to mildew and dry rot of the rug.

Besides of course the fact that this becomes an open pet toilet in your living space – which is not good for the health of you or your family.

Mildew growth on back of Persian rug with repeated pet urine activity - this is the stage before dry rot sets in.

The only way to remove the urine from the inside of these rugs is to have them completely immersed in a plant specializing in washing rugs. The rug needs a thorough bath.

Cleaning rugs like these in the home only surface cleans them. It gets the top fibers cleaner, but does nothing to the inside fiber contamination.

They may spray some disinfectant, or deodorizer on the rug to make it smell “good” – but smelling good does not mean it is CLEAN. This is not any different than spraying fragrance on a diaper, and then expecting it to be used again. It may not smell bad – but you know that would be completely unacceptable and unhealthy.

Proper cleaning presents a catch 22 though, because what is needed is a good thorough soak for an extended period of time. You soak it first in white vinegar (acetic acid) to penetrate the inside of the rug to liquify and help remove the urine salts from the inside of the rug – many times you can see the water literally run gold from pet problems.

However, pet urine stains, if they have sat on the rug for longer than a week, can create a break in the dye bond to the wool and can make even very colorfast rugs “bleed” during the wash.

The catch 22 is that because there are pet urine stains, the rug needs to be soaked completely… but because there are pet urine spills the dyes will likely bleed if the rug is washed, no matter what a professional cleaner does to stabilize dyes during cleaning.

It is important, if you are a rug cleaner, to inform your client of this, and to make sure they are informed of these four things: 1) the rug must be given a wet wash to remove the odor causing contaminants from the inside of the rug; 2) that pet urine stains are permanent; 3) that even though white vinegar will be used to remove the urine salts, and stabilize dyes during the wash process, pet affected areas are likely to bleed despite all of your best efforts; and 4) that pet urine causes damage to rugs that devalues them permanently.

If a rug can be cleaned properly soon after any significant pet accident, you can avert permanent damage. If a rug cleaning cannot happen quickly, then the steps outlined in this post can help you minimize the damage.

It might be a good idea to either toss some cheaper rugs over the top of your valuable ones during the hectic holidays, or roll them up until your company – and happy chaos – passes and your pets get back to being wonderfully well-behaved.

Happy New Year!

- 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

Me and the Falls

One of the many rugs we handled in the clinic was a rug that they asked me how to make it “white” again – here it is:

Hand woven wool rug from India

The question is – is this rug WHITE to begin with?

A white towel shows us the yellow of this rug.

One of the dangers of seeking out white and ivory rugs is that they do have a tendency to YELLOW over time.

If you look at a sheep, none are truly that Colgate-white-teeth white. So the wool when sheared, tends to be heavily bleached to create that “white” look. So the end result is not quite natural (just like those smiles make you wonder what the heck they painted on those teeth… they don’t look natural.)

Now, sometimes, improper cleaning (i.e. using the wrong cleaning solutions) can yellow a rug. If it is a result of the CLEANING then it would have the problem only on the front side of the rug because that is the side being cleaned.

If the yellowing is from the environment (i.e. foot traffic and sunlight exposure), then again, this yellowing would be on the front side only because the back has not been walked on or placed in those UV rays.

Let’s take a look at the back side compared to the front:

Comparing the back and the front of the rug.

In this case, the back side IS yellowing the same as the front, so this is simply the effect of age to the wool used in this rug. Again, BRIGHT white is not a natural color of wool, so this process to make it more appealing for the buyer has the negative effect of turning yellow.

Be sure to rotate the rug in the setting, as it can look more white from one direction versus the other. And just realize when you are shopping for rugs, that the white state can only be temporary with wool. It’s just the way it was made, and there is nothing wrong with the rug itself… and though professional cleaners may be able to lighten the look a touch with some oxidizers or reducing bleaches, these solutions (just like the original treatment) are chemical treatments that DO cause damage to those fibers. Some cleaners may refuse to do the work for fear of creating structural problems for the rug.

One solution may be to simply buy a blue rug instead.

- Lisa