How is a Handknotted Rug Made?

How is a Handknotted Rug Made?

  • Preparing the yarn - 2 to 25 Days 
Rug making starts from selecting the yarn based on their thickness and origin, the feel of the yarn is felt by hand to check the quality, softness, cleanliness and tensile strength. This can take anywhere between 10 to 35 days depending on the material and on the count of the final Yarn.
              
  • Dyeing process – 2 days
Once the lot is checked the yarn is further dyed into favorable colors for best shade and tone.
Yarn is dyed by boiling the water and color chemicals over fire then immersing the yarn into the vessel for a particular period of time so as to ensure proper coloring and texture that is deepness (rich), lightness (pastel) and contrast of the color.
            
 
  • Handspinning of yarn – 2 days
Bundling and Handspinning of yarn includes opening and making small easy to use size bundles for the weavers. Single worker opens about 5 kilos of yarns a day.
              
  • Designing the rug – 15 days
Designing includes proper mapping of the rug with colors and design. Final print is provided with colors and design arranged according to the knots. Our expert designers are capable of delivering art styles to traditional designs. Abstract, Inspirational, modern, erased, Mughal, Persian are some kind of widely used designs.
               
  • Finalizing and visualization – 1 day
Ensuring proper design, color, yarn and the overall feel of the rug is visualized by the expertise and if any changes this is the final step before altering the rug.
                                 
  • Looming of rug – 2 Days
Looming starts with rotating cotton/wool/silk yarn around the poles for the decided quality of the rug, the higher the quality and finer the material is More rounds of WARP is rotated around the poles.
Each rotated WARP roll is transferred on a loom with equal length among the threads, and then the loom is set for making the initial knotting of the rug.
While we do in house looming as well but due to amount of work and for quality control we out-source the rug to our vendors. Looming of the rug involves WARP and WEFTS to be arranged in a manner so that there are two parallel columns and one horizontal for making the knots tight.
              
  • Knotting the Rug - 75 to 150 Days

    Hand-knotting is the most intricate and labor-intensive carpet weaving process in use today. It requires good hand-eye coordination, dexterity of hand, steady temperament and most of all, a little soul. There is a distinct artistic harmony to this skill, which seems to bind the soul of the weaver to the rug. This is why each rug holds an individuality that is difficult to reproduce ever again.
             
             
 
  • Inspection of a Raw Rug - 1 Day 
When a Rug is received from loom, an intricate inspection is done to ensure quality of pile, perfection in design, all the warp and wefts are in perfect condition, if a rug is not in a straight line then the rug is sent for stretching before any finishing process. All of the fibers are checked for their intactness and are counted to be make sure that the rug is woven complete and there are not any  missing knots.
 
  • Stretching - 3 Days
The rug is stretched to the perfect size as it is hard to stretch a wet rug, stretching is done after drying of the rug beofre any finishing process so as to make 100% sure that the rug is intact and perfect from all four sides not making the rug loose its fibers and strength this is done on a customized frame for every rugs unique size.
     
  • Shearing ( Cutting excess Fibers) – 1 Day 
After the rug is received it is sent to cut the extra raw fiber, this process takes one day. Fiber is cut according to the style and design requirements. We have low pile, high pile, high and low.
          
          
  • Washing – 1 Day
The most important part of Rug manufacturing comes here; the rug is soaked in water and hard chemicals, so as to bring out proper colors, sheen, feel and aesthetics to the rug. Washing of the rug is a continuous process and can’t be stopped in between. Rugs are not washed in monsoons as then it’s difficult to dry them up.
                 
                 
  • Drying – 2 days
After the wash is done, the rug is stretched and kept in abundant sunshine to dry the rug completely making sure there is no moisture left in the rug.
   
      
 
  • Side binding - 12 Hours
Once the rug is received and is in its standard size. The sides of the rug are bind together to give strength and to ensure that yarns doesn’t draw out of the rug and so the rug retains its standard shape.
 
          
          
    
  • Final Shearing - 24 Hours
Cutting of the excess fibers and reinsuring that the rug has all its yarns on the same level according to their materials and that no yarn is coming out of the rug.
While this process initially helps in attaining feel to the rug. Now a days it includes one more process in which the different materials are given a particular level which gives a 3D feel to the rug.
If the rug needs one more wash for the sheen and vibrancy it is done at this level, Color hues are also added at this level in the rug.
  • Finishing and cleaning - 12 Hours
The rug comes to the final finishing part, where the fibers which are not in place, extra fibers which are in base of the rug if they show up on the final product are chopped down of that the design have no negative noise of these yarns.
The rug is cleaned with special brooms, vacuums. The fringes are cleaned and leveled, according to the customization fringes can be folded up and stitched on the back of the rug.
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