Guide · For the trade
How are rugs made: the hand-knotted process from graph to loom to wash, and how long it takes
How rugs are made depends on the construction, and the hand-knotted rug is the slow one: the design is drawn as a graph with one square per knot, the wool is hand-spun and pot-dyed to the designer's poms, a loom is warped, and weavers tie each knot by hand around pairs of warps, 60 to 150 knots per square inch, beating down a weft after every row. A 9x12 at 100 knots per square inch is about 1.5 million knots, which three weavers tie in 12 to 14 weeks; washing, shearing, stretching and finishing add 4 to 6 weeks, which is why production runs 18 to 20 weeks after the strike-off is approved.
This guide is for the designer about to explain to a client why a custom rug takes five months, or who wants to know what is happening at each stage of an order placed through the Design Studio. It walks the hand-knotted process step by step with the time each takes and puts the other constructions beside it. The hand-knotted rugs guide covers judging the finished rug.
Step one: the design becomes a graph
Every hand-knotted rug starts as a map. The rendering you approved is redrawn at the rug's knot count: a 100 knot rug is a grid of 10 by 10 squares per inch, and every square is one knot in one color. The map is where the design is proofed for the loom: a smooth curve is now a staircase of knots, and a line narrower than a knot disappears. The strike-off is the map woven at full scale, usually an 18 by 18 inch corner with the border, and the strike-off guide covers what to check on it. The graph takes one to two weeks, inside the 4 to 6 weeks to the strike-off.
Step two: the wool is spun and dyed
Rug wool is coarser and longer-stapled than apparel wool. Highland wool from Tibet and Nepal, and the wools of New Zealand and India, are washed, carded and hand-spun; the unevenness of hand-spun yarn gives the pile a variation machine-spun yarn cannot imitate. The yarn is pot-dyed, skein by skein, to the poms you approved; variation from pot to pot is called abrash, and a little of it is wanted. Silk reads lighter and brighter in the same color, which the rendering accounts for. Spinning and dyeing for a 9x12 take two to three weeks and run alongside the graph.
Step three: warping the loom and tying the knots
A vertical loom is strung with cotton warps, the threads that run the length of the rug and become the fringe; the knot count sets the warps per inch and the rug width sets the loom. Weavers sit side by side, two to four on a 9 or 10 ft width, and tie one row at a time: a length of colored yarn looped around a pair of warps, pulled tight and cut, the ends standing up to become the pile. The Persian knot is asymmetric and allows finer detail; the Turkish knot is symmetric and sturdier; the Tibetan knot is tied around a rod that is cut to release a full row at once. After each row a weft is beaten down with a heavy comb, locking the knots in place. A practiced weaver ties 6,000 to 10,000 knots a day.
How long does it take to make a hand-knotted rug?
| Stage | What happens | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Graph and yarn | Design mapped to the knot count; wool spun and pot-dyed to poms | 2 to 3 weeks, within the strike-off period |
| Strike-off | An 18 by 18 in corner woven at full scale for approval | 4 to 6 weeks from the approved rendering |
| Warping and weaving | Three weavers tie about 1.5 million knots for a 9x12 at 100 knots per sq in | 12 to 14 weeks |
| Finishing | Cut from the loom, washed, shorn, carved, stretched, fringe finished, inspected | 4 to 6 weeks |
| Freight and installation | Shipped to the site; our installer pads and places it | 2 to 4 weeks |
Production is 18 to 20 weeks from approval and deposit, and the full timeline from brief to install is five to six months. A 6x9 saves three to four weeks of weaving; a 150 knot rug takes half again as long. The wash and the finishing do not compress, so for a date under three months a hand-tufted custom or a bound broadloom rug is the honest answer; the custom rugs guide lays out all three.
Step four: washing, shearing and finishing
The rug comes off the loom with a shaggy, uneven pile and dull color. It is washed on a floor with water and a mild detergent, which opens the wool, sets the dyes and brings up the sheen, and dries in the sun on a frame. Then it is shorn to the specified pile height, 1/4 to 1/2 inch for most work, and in a Tibetan rug the outlines are carved so the motifs stand proud of the ground. The rug is stretched to true the sides and corners, the fringe finished, the selvedges overcast, and the rug inspected against the graph before freight. It is 4 to 6 weeks the client never sees.
How are rugs made in the other constructions
| Construction | How it is made | Time for a 9x12 | What it is good at |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hand-knotted | Knots tied by hand around warps, one row at a time | 18 to 20 weeks production | Detail, longevity, any size without a seam |
| Hand-tufted | Yarn punched through a canvas with a tufting gun, then latex and a scrim backing | 10 to 14 weeks | Curves, lettering, bold color, faster custom |
| Hand-loomed | Yarn woven on a hand loom with a shuttle; loop or cut pile | 10 to 14 weeks | Texture, solids, wide widths for broadloom |
| Flatweave (kilim, dhurrie) | Weft woven through warps with no pile | 8 to 12 weeks | Reversible, thin, under doors and dining chairs |
| Machine woven (Wilton, Axminster) | A power loom weaves the pile from a digital pattern | 4 to 12 weeks, or a listed size | Repeatable pattern, price, broadloom and runners |
The hand-tufted vs hand-knotted guide and the machine made vs handmade guide take the comparisons further; most of our 555 hand-knotted rugs can be made in a custom size or color on the same loom.
Questions designers ask
Which hand-made rugs are made without a tufting gun?
Hand-knotted, hand-loomed and flatwoven rugs. The tufting gun is the tool of a hand-tufted rug, which is why a hand-tufted rug has a latex backing and a hand-knotted rug shows the design on its back.
What are rugs made of?
Wool is the pile fiber in most hand-made rugs, with silk, viscose, linen, alpaca and mohair used for sheen or hand, on cotton warps and wefts. Machine-made rugs add nylon, polyester and polypropylene. The wool filter sorts the catalog by fiber.
What is the disadvantage of 100 percent wool carpet?
It costs more than a synthetic, it sheds for the first months in a cut pile, and as an animal fiber it needs to be kept vacuumed so moths do not find it. In return it is self-extinguishing, resilient, takes dye better than anything else and lasts decades hand-knotted.
What is the 70 percent rule for rugs?
A sizing rule: the rug covers about 70 percent of the floor of the room or the zone it serves, leaving 12 to 18 inches of floor at the walls. The area rug size guide has the numbers by room.
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