At Ward’s we pride ourselves in our ability to use age old techniques to repair rugs by hand. Having said this, we will always recommend the most cost effective manner to repair a rug to our customers. If you have a one hundred year old Sarouk, it is worth spending the money to have it hand repaired. If you have a two year old nylon Heriz, it is not worth spending the money to have it repaired by hand, rather you’d want a less expensive fix which we would recommend.

Overcasting

The fringes are the most vulnerable part of an oriental rug and if they unravel, the whole rug eventually could unravel. If you notice the fringes on your rug beginning to unravel, we can do a hand repair to stop this called “Overcasting”. Simply put, overcasting is a process by which we use a very durable thread to weave in between the weft threads of the end of the rug, thus forming a “lock stitch” to prevent the rug from unraveling. This is recommended for hand made rugs.

Repairing Tears

Because rugs are textiles, they are vulnerable to tearing. If this occurs, we usually recommend two ways to repair a tear. The first is for machine made rugs and the second is for hand made rugs.
1) On machine made rugs we use a “hot patch” placed on the underside of the rug which is put on using seaming tape and a seaming iron. This works well with both synthetic as well as wool rugs and lasts almost indefinitely.
2) On hand made rugs we sew the rug together by hand using a very durable thread.

Re-Coloring

Due to traffic patterns or simply wear from years of use, the pile of a rug may be worn down to the foundation, thereby creating a “bare spot”. Two things can be done to salvage a rug in this condition. First, a rug can be re-woven (new pile put in). This is a very time consuming and expensive process, which in a lot of cases is not justified due to the value of the rug. The second method is called re-coloring. This is the process where markers are used to “color” the rug to make the pattern look like the pile is still there. Once a rug is “colored”, we recommend it be turned so the “colored” area is no longer in the traffic lane.