Area Rug Construction

Nebraska Furniture Mart carries the three basic styles of rugs: machine made, hand tufted and hand woven.

Machine Made
Machine made rugs are created according the popular designs and trends of hand tufted and woven rugs. The rugs are created on a tufting machine. Each rug pattern created on the machine is consistent so it may be produced in mass quantities.

Hand Tufted
Hand tufting matches more expensive hand knotted or woven rugs in intricacy of design, detail and coloring - at a fraction of the cost. A hand tufted rug is constructed by pushing yarns through a heavy canvas backing, then shearing the face of the rug to create a cut pile. These rugs are very heavy and extremely dense in weave.

Hand Woven
Hand woven rugs start with a detailed illustration of the design, most commonly called a cartoon that guides the weavers throughout the entire rug-making process. The design is rendered on graph paper to scale.
Looms used today consist of two vertical beams of either wood or metal and two similarly horizontal beams. The distance between the vertical beams determines the rug’s width. Warp threads, usually cotton, are strung between the horizontal beams at a consistent tension. The thickness of the warp threads and the closeness at which they are strung are two of the elements that will determine the fineness of the weave of the carpet that is ultimately woven.
The rug is woven on the loom using tied knots in rows until it is complete. After the rug has been cut from the loom, the final finishing steps take place. First, edges are bound or overcast with yarn to reinforce the side edges of the rug. The ends, which secured it to the loom are knotted or braided to from the fringe. Once the rug is washed and dried, a carpet cutter shears the tops of the knots to create a uniform pile height.