Rug Weaving – Sharing the Art and History

January 28, 2010 — admin

In this day of disposable products everywhere you look, there is reason to have deep admiration and appreciation for anything that is hand crafted.

Many of these crafts and arts are dying off. So when those who LOVE handmade items get together, there is an intensity, energy, and passion that you don’t find many places.

Those who learn a bit about hand woven rugs, and know how they are woven, one knot at a time, generally LOVE them. I know I do.

Loom used to hand weave a rug - one knot at a time.

Loom used to hand weave a rug - one knot at a time.

A 9×12 rug can take three weavers working 6 days a week, ten hours a day, over a year to weave a hand-knotted rug. That is a piece of someone’s life you have on the floor. A piece of their heart and soul. And that doesn’t even take into consideration the shearing of the wool, dyeing of the wool, spinning of the wool, before they even begin to weave the rug.

My mother Kate Blatchford  and I had the pleasure of being featured presenters to a recent meeting of the Palomar Weavers Guild – a group of fabric, textile, and dyeing experts. My mother Kate is the founder of our San Diego Rug Cleaning Company, and she and my brother David have launched a blog dedicated to rug repairs.

Here is me and mom at the weavers event:

Kate Blatchford talking with members.

Kate Blatchford talking with members.

Here I am speaking with some weaving guild members.

Here I am speaking with some weaving guild members.

We also hosted a meeting at our San Diego Rug Cleaning Company plant, and I welcomed industry professionals from the local Carpet & Fabricare Institute chapter to learn about rugs in the rug repair section of our facility.

Exclusive rug workshop for local CFI members in San Diego.

Exclusive workshop for local CFI members in our repair wing of our facility.

There are not many resources out there for those in the general cleaning industry to learn about rug care from those who actually DO the craft.

I have not conducted full multi-day rug cleaning clinics for many years… but this year I am planning to do a number of them.  Some for those professional carpet cleaners and restorers who want to learn the craft properly (and how to find the right clients to clean for)… and some other workshops for consumers who are interested in learning more about the art and history of rugs, and also what rugs to absolutely buy, and which ones to run away from.  The good, the bad, and the ugly in the rug world.

Opt-in to my Rug Chick updates list, and you’ll get first notification of workshops coming across the US this year. They will be small, and extremely in-depth, and they will fill up very fast.

In the meantime, any questions you have about rugs, or topics you would like to see covered here on the Rug Chick blog – please post them in the comments. I’d love to know what you’d like to learn more about.

- Lisa

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Love/Hate Relationship With Fringe

December 17, 2009 — admin

What is it about fringe?

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

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New Oriental Rugs – Protecting Your Investment

September 15, 2009 — therugchick

I use the term “oriental rug” to mean a hand-woven rug (as opposed to an “area rug” which is a machine made rug).

Technically “oriental” refers to “the East” (the Orient) and rugs woven over on the other side of this great planet of ours. Academics use “occidental rug” to refer to those rugs woven in the western hemisphere, such as Navajo rugs.

I know that technically I should distinguish between oriental and occidental – but I don’t. I’ve never used the term occidental with a client, ever. They think I’m saying accidental rug with a pompous “oh” instead of the “ax” – so I keep it simple. Hand woven is “oriental rug” to me – and this is what I see in my head:

Loom from Castle Cleaning in Colorado.

Loom from Castle Cleaning in Colorado.

I see the hand work that has twisted every single knot around those warp threads. I see the sheared wool, the dyeing process, the spinning process, the months (and sometimes years) of creation time.

I see a piece of someone’s life in front of me. A part of someone’s soul in a piece of art now place in your home for you to enjoy.

A hand woven rug makes me smile.

Machine woven rugs? Tufted rugs with material backing? They just have no heart to me. No soul. No love.

I have loved many, many wonderful rugs, brand new and some centuries old. None have been machine made. It’s like really loving GOOD food, and having to go to McDonald’s – there is just no pleasure in a knock off. At least not for me. It’s one of the joys – and curses – of knowing so much about a craft … when you really appreciate the art, you are drawn to the well-made pieces.

And I appreciate those who in a world full of commodity, cheap, machine-made product, will choose to buy a hand crafted rug. I appreciate those who value and buy a REAL rug. (I am still very nice to everyone who buys area rugs also – I just enjoy the hand woven rugs more.)

I received an email today from a peer who received a brand new hand woven rug from a client. She has had the rug a few days, and noticed that a damp cloth makes the red dye transfer to it. The peer was asking me for some advice – here is the rug from Iran:

Wool hand woven rug.

Wool hand woven rug.

With brand new rugs, it is possible that they have a certain amount of “excess dye” in the fibers. This washes away in the first cleaning (some rugs are washed thoroughly before being sold and these do not have this situation).

If the rug is in an area where there may be spills, then they might pose a problem, because the dye may move and migrate to other areas. So this is what I suggested to my peer. Not to wash it fully, but to rinse the tips of the fibers.

Rugs, especially oriental rugs, should be given a bath when cleaned. This is the recommended thorough way of cleaning rugs. This should be done in a rug plant, because thorough dusting, the wash, and complete drying are required. Many rugs have dyes that are not colorfast, so these professionals are trained to stabilize the dyes during the cleaning process.

But with this rug, a bath is not needed. The issue is not soil, but excess dye. If you are a professional rug cleaner, these are the steps I’d recommend:

1) Use your Drimaster tool. This is the PERFECT tool because you want to be able to rinse the fibers thoroughly and IMMEDIATELY extract without the water moving to other areas and potentially making the red dye move to neighboring areas. (If you do not own a Drimaster tool you can find it on the Hydramaster site.)

2) You can adjust the amount of water flow, and you can see the water through the viewer to see if it is red or simply clear. Make short strokes WITH the grain of the wool fibers several times, and then turn off the water flow and follow up with a dry stroke to pick up any remaining moisture.

(To determine the GRAIN of the fibers, pet the rug as you would your dog. You will know when you are going WITH the grain or AGAINST it – and you always want your tool strokes or brushing strokes to be WITH the grain.)

3) Keep the rug out flat, and dry it quickly. If you use a Dri-Eaz AirPath, it will dry in minutes.  Set it beside the rug rather than over it so as not to leave any impressions from the airmover legs.

4) Take a damp towel to verify that no more dye transfers as before.

It is not unusual to have “excess dye” in the fibers of a new rug. This wool is very thoroughly dyed those beautiful colors, and just as with new sweaters in the laundry, some dye comes off in the first cleaning. (Just as your grandmother used to add vinegar to her wash to help stabilize and protect neighboring fabrics from absorbing this migrated dye – many rug plants use vinegar also as a rug dye stabilizing agent in their facilities. Old world ways in new world operations.)

The reason I like this “surface rinse” of a brand new rug is because it takes away that excess dye (which might give a rug owner problems if there is a spill), but also because even though the rug is “new” it is not necessarily clean. Dust settles in the store, some have people who walk on them in the store, and the shipping and transport from overseas is not necessarily the cleanest experience. The thorough rinse can remove surface contaminants as well as that excess dye.

If you are a proud owner of a brand new wonderfully hand woven rug, and you find a little dye coming off on a damp towel and you are concerned – now you know what to do.  A surface rinse with a new piece of technology that keeps the rug from having to be given a bath just to remove a little bit of extra dye.

Some rugs last for centuries – so they are not a part of our lives; we are a part of theirs. I hope you enjoy your new (or old) woven rug for many years to come.

- Lisa

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Smokin' Hot Rug…

August 25, 2009 — therugchick

Don’t know if you know this, but wool does not carry a flame. It is naturally fire resistant.

This does not mean that a super hot fire cannot engulf a wool textile, but an isolated flame will self-extinguish. This is good to know when you are choosing fabrics in your home, because inevitably fires do happen, and it’s best to not give it extra fuel. (When I watched a video of how quickly a Christmas tree can become an inferno in a home – literally seconds – I started buying small live trees instead of chopped down ones, it scared me that much.)

Once in awhile we get rugs with fire damage. With soot, smoke, ash, we can give the rugs a bath and remove much of the damage to put the rug in “pre-loss” condition.

Once in awhile though, it’s more than soot – it’s a burned hole. And even then, sometimes, the “impossible” is possible … like with this rug that a client believed headed to the trash heap:

Damaged to Done photos

Damaged to Done photos

This is the handy work of my mother Kate, a weaver, and the founder of our facility in San Diego. We have a repair team on staff to handle everything from the usual suspects (torn fringe from a vacuum cleaner to be replaced) to the more difficult projects like this fire damage order from the wildfires in San Diego.

When you have a home that has gone through the emotional devastation of a fire, and you’ve lost about everything, being able to save one thing… one piece of your former home… means a lot.  So when we can make a small miracle with a rug like this, it creates one of those really happy moments in a company – when you know you’ve made a small difference in someone else’s world.

At our plant at San Diego Rug Cleaning Company, we love rugs. But we also love people, and it’s that mix that creates success in any business because it’s a mix that makes a difference.

- Lisa

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What If The Old Ways Are Actually Better?

July 12, 2009 — therugchick

There is a drive in every aspect of our lives to make things better.  Quicker, stronger, cheaper.

This Macbook I’m typing on right now, wirelessly at an airport – is a prime example. Ten years ago… even five years ago, I wouldn’t be able to do this post right now.

It’s part of what makes the world – and life – amazing right now. But also makes us impatient. My flight is delayed, and people here are grumbling, not I guess too impressed that we’re about to fly through the air to magically appear in another city.

Here’s a VERY funny video about this topic – funny but sad I guess.  Life is amazing and nobody is happy.

It makes me wonder sometimes about “progress” actually progressing us as a “people.”  I know at least in the rug world, as the craft of hand weaving a rug slowly dies away, we are losing something important.

Many rugs are becoming commodities – made by machine, quicker, and cheaper.  Absolutely not better. Inferior fibers, dyes, and construction. I see more disposable rugs today than ever before. Ones that will be replaced in a few years instead of in a hundred years.

A hand woven rug can take months, sometimes years, to create. It is a piece of someone’s life. The dye masters are experts in just that - dyeing. The results of a dye master family, skills passed down from generation to generation, makes our new products pale in comparison.

Here is a photo of a rug loom – just look at the detail required to create a textile:

A rug is a piece of a weaver's life.

A rug is a piece of a weaver's life.

As there is “progress” in the rug weaving world, we are losing the culture and connection and tradition that made these textiles “magical” in the first place. There are places where the handcraft and tradition still exist, it’s just slowly getting harder to find.

But this is the same with all traditions, as they are engulfed by “progress.”

I just read a book this weekend – “Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superatheletes, and the Greatest Race The World Has Never Seen” 

Absolutely a book worth reading, even if you are not a runner. It brings to light a lot of wisdom from a isolated culture not just about running, but about life, and living it to enjoy it rather than simply to “get something done.”

It’s amazing how as we get more and more connected to one another electronically, that we become more and more disconnected with life, with tradition, and with doing something just for the pure enjoyment of it. 

What I love about rugs – REAL rugs – is that story behind them. That a shephard raised the sheep that gave the wool. That a dye master scoured the wool, and dyed it a myriad of colors. That a weaver had a picture in her mind, and spun the wool to create that textile. That the rug before me will outlast me several times over.

Progress is awesome. I love my Mac, I love my iPhone, I love my blog.

But tradition is very cool too. Let’s try to hold on to a little bit of both.  Now I’m off to go fly through the air like a superhero!

- Lisa

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They are ALL crooked!

June 27, 2009 — therugchick

Here’s a secret for you… ALL handmade rugs are crooked. Some may aim for perfection, but it’s very hard to achieve when hand crafting anything.

Have you ever written in a journal, set it down then picked it up to write again? When you go back you can see slight variations in your handwriting. The slant is a little off. Maybe you were more attentive and sharp, and other times sleepy – and the words showed those variations.

Weaving is not much different. Rugs are woven over months, sometimes years, and larger rug by more than one weaver – so there are variations that show up on the rug.  Like this:

 

Hah! Crooked!

Hah! Crooked!

When you inspect a hand woven rug you need to expect to find variations in the width and length of the rug. It is to be expected.  It is part of the rug’s “personality” – just like one of your feet is a bit bigger than the other one (go ahead, check).

But, if you clean a rug and place it down in the opposite direction, and the rug looks different to the client, they may feel that you’ve done something to shrink or stretch their rug.

It’s best to explain the variations up front, not as flaws but as characteristics.  Again, if you point it out BEFORE the wash it’s EDUCATION – you point it out after the wash it’s an EXCUSE.

All rugs are crooked. Nothing wrong with that! :)

- Lisa

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Oriental Rug Freckles.

June 6, 2009 — therugchick

Okay, the technical term is not “rug freckles” but that’s what I call them. (My blog, my vocab!)

They are white knots.

Sometimes a handful, like this:

White knots (a handful)

White knots (a handful)

Sometimes HUNDREDS like this one :

White knots (a truckload)

White knots (a truckload)

These exist with ALL hand woven rugs. Here’s what happens.

Remember that rug loom I showed you a few posts back? Notice on the loom how the warps are strung vertically on it (these are the white cotton strands running bottom to top of the loom).

The wool knots are tied (actually twisted) from side to side, one row at a time, around those warp strands, and with a new cotton weft thread(s) inserted in between the rows of knots to hold them in place.

(I say white cotton here because the majority of rugs you will see come through your cleaning facility will be woven on a cotton foundation. The foundation threads – the “skeleton” of the rug – can be wool or silk, but these are in the minority as foundation fibers.)

So… the weaver is twisting the wool knots around the white cotton warp threads, back and forth, and then back and forth, and in between is using a metal/wood comb (or other device) to POUND down the knots evenly in place, and then SNAP!!! a strand breaks!

It’s impossible at that point to replace the warp strand – rugs can take months and sometimes years to weave by hand, so there are no “do overs.” You have to work with what you have.  And in this case, that means taking the two broken ends, and tying them together into a knot. Just like you’d do with a broken shoelace if you had no other option but to fix it and keep running.

These white knots then end up as part of the resulting rug. After the rug is completed, the weavers usually trim down the tied ends so that they are hidden underneath the fuzzy wool fibers. But as rugs are used, and face fibers are worn down with age and foot traffic, these knots can reemerge.

When the rug is dirty, you may not see them because they are grayed out.  But if you are cleaning the rug WATCH OUT – you may have a very clean rug full of freckles that shocks the rug’s owner because she didn’t remember them being there.

Unfortunately, the better you are at cleaning, the whiter these freckles can become.

If you can identify these BEFORE the cleaning, and explain why they are there to the rug’s owner, you can avoid an unhappy client.

When you point things out BEFORE cleaning is it EDUCATON … when you point it out AFTER the cleaning it is an EXCUSE.

ALL hand woven rugs have white knots, the question is to what extent. A handful or a truckload?

You can see them on the front and the back. So make finding them part of your pre-inspection routine. Freckles aren’t bad – they are what they are.  Characteristics. Something that makes the rug unique.

Most rug owners don’t mind them at all, while others always seem to want their rug freckles removed. They can’t be removed, but you can – with some patience and some good dyes – blend them away so they are less noticeable.  Rug makeup!  :)

Just make sure you don’t put it on too heavy, or the neighbors will make fun of you.

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Why Rugs Have Stripes.

May 31, 2009 — therugchick
Rug loom

Rug loom

With hand woven rugs, the knots are tied (actually they are wrapped) around the foundation threads from side to side.

Search google images for RUG LOOM – and you will find photos of looms – like this one of a Tibetan rug.

The face fibers (in this case wool) are wrapped around the warp threads to create the “fuzzy” side of the rug.  And here’s where the “stripes” come from. The color of the wool has natural variations in its original condition.  Take a good look at the next herd of sheep you see, and you will see that though they all look the same, actually they vary from one another a bit. Some a little more gray, or yellow, or ivory.

The wool is affected by genetics, by diet, by environment, by age. And when it is dyed a particular color, it carries with it those same variations into the end product.  As one batch of wool is used, then runs out, and another is grabbed, these variations create a side to side striping in the rug that is referred to as “abrash.”

Abrash is a natural dye variation in a hand woven rug. It is not viewed as a flaw, but rather as a characteristic of a hand woven rug. Every rug has this, though some to a greater degree than others.

Here’s the danger with abrash. If you do not point it out BEFORE the cleaning, a client may believe that you have caused damage to the rug.  When it was covered up in soil they just knew the rug to be red. But when clean, they may see the striping in the field – that they don’t remember – and mistakenly think that you have damaged their rug.

How to counteract this? Take a look at the BACK of the rug.  If the discoloration can be seen on the back side – the side that has not been exposed to light, foot traffic, or the cleaning solutions – then you know you are dealing with changes in the wool itself – dye lot changes – and not anything related to your cleaning process.

Here is a great comparison of the front and back of an old Feraghan Sarouk rug to show you a fabulous example of abrash in action:

Abrash (front of rug)

Abrash (front of rug)

Abrash (back of rug)

Abrash (back of rug)

Always include a mention of abrash in EVERY pre-inspection process you have with clients, so there are no surprises. Just like people have different variations in how they look, so do rugs.  It’s part of their unique rug “personality.”

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