What the heck is handmade rug fringe cleaning and why do I care? Here at First Class Green Cleaning, we take pride in the fact that we actually clean all of our handmade rugs in our facility. What you may not know is that many cleaners charge you extra and take your rugs to a rug washing specialist. This may mean great results for your rug but you will usually have to wait longer to get it.
Handmade Rug Fringe Cleaning – What is it
What we call fringe is the tassels or strings that are usually on the ends of some handmade area rugs. Many people do not like these on their area rugs and are asking facilities to cut them off. This is actually a terrible idea when speaking of the overall value of the rug. The fringe of a true handmade rug is the base of the rug, the skeleton if you will. It is generally made of cotton fabric that is used to hold all the pretty colors in. They simply extend them past the colorful face fibers and tie them in a knot to hold the pattern of the rug in. If you cut this, you can expect your rug to fall apart pretty soon.
If you absolutely hate the look of your rug with fringe on it, you are better served to have a professional remove it for you. Yes, you will completely devalue the rug, but it will not actually destroy the rug. A professional shop is going to use a seam sealer before they cut the rug to limit the damage. Then they will follow this up by adding an edging such as binding or serging to secure the rug for the rest of its life.
Handmade Rug Fringe Cleaning – How it’s done
For the sake of brevity, I will not go into too much detail on the rug cleaning part, but if it is safe to be done, the entire rug is submerged in a cleaning solution, then flushed out, then dried. Many times, the fringe cleans up just fine through this process. Sometimes an extra soiled rug will need special detailing, but usually, it is of little concern. Sometimes rugs have unstable dyes, as is the case of the rug pictured above. If a dye is unstable, you cannot simply through the entire rug into a cleaning bath, unless you want to make a fun tie-dye of a client’s rug. In this case, the rug was cleaned much lighter, speed dried, followed by hand detailing of the fringe.
In any case, if you have a handmade rug with fringe in desperate need of cleaning, you can trust the professionals at First Class Green Cleaning to take care of it for you.