Reweaving warp and weft

Warp, weft, foundation

The warp is the threads held taut along the length, from one end of the loom to the other: the skeleton of the rug. The weft is the threads passed across after each row of knots to lock them — most often two, one taut, one slack. Together, warp and weft form the foundation: the support you see bare wherever the pile has gone.

The pile has no existence of its own. Each knot is tied around two warp threads and locked by the next weft. Take the weft out: the knots slide. Cut the warp: the whole row is released. That is why any deep repair starts with the foundation, and never with what can be seen.

One sentence comes up again and again with owners: "the rug is coming apart". It is almost always true in the literal sense. When a weft breaks, the knots it was locking slide along the warp and the pile is released in whole rows, like a ladder running in a knitted fabric.

Rewefting or reweaving

Two situations, two operations. If the warp threads are intact and only the weft has given way — a frequent case along the selvedges and on moth-damaged areas — we reweft: fresh thread is passed between the existing warps and the cloth closes up again. It is the lightest intervention of the family.

If the warp is cut, reweaving is needed. The lengthwise threads are restored across the whole width of the damage, anchored well into sound material so that the repair does not work at the edge of the join, then rewefted over the top. A repair anchored too short works loose at the first handling.

Tension decides everything

A reweave is judged flat, several months later. A new foundation mounted too taut pulls on its neighbours and hollows out a dip; mounted too slack, it domes and the reknotted pile opens out like a fan. The work is therefore done under controlled tension, the area held on a frame, and the rug is laid flat again between stages to check that it is not pulling anywhere.

Density is matched too. The knots are counted per square decimetre on a sound area, then that count is reproduced on the new foundation. That is what stops a join showing in raking light — the light that reveals, precisely, every fault in the surface.

The heaviest operation in the workshop

A rebuilt foundation means a rug that can be handled again. It can be washed without opening up, laid without buckling, and above all the pile can be reknotted over it to restore the design. Without it, any reknotting comes apart in the end.

It is also the slowest and the most technical work, and the most demanding in materials. And it is the work that saves the pieces people thought were lost: a rug whose foundation has been remade recovers the life expectancy of a rug, not of a relic.

A successful reweave is no more felt than it is seen. Run your hand flat over the area: it must have the same suppleness as the rest, with no hard spot and no dead patch. A repair the finger finds straight away is a repair mounted too taut.