Cross Stitch Rug circ 1980

The client approached us to restore her floral cross-stitch rug, which her mum made in the early 1980s. She requested that the worn parts of the carpet be repaired and the tassels be replaced. We agreed to add a heavy-duty cotton lining and anti-slip strips, as the client insisted on keeping the carpet on the floor.

We started the cleaning process by vacuuming the piece first. The rug was ed after the initial vacuum to remove the loose dirt and debris. It has never been washed, and the carpet was washed several times to lift the dirt. e hand-washed in a large tub in lukewarm water and detergent used for wool. The water after the first two washes resembled a dirty puddle wa er. e rinsed it and gave it a longer soak in warm water with the detergent. During the wash, we noticed that some of the wool thread became loose, which uncovered the stitched areas even more damaged. e left the dry flat for almost a week. After the drying, we colour-matched the wool and started the restoration process.

As the first step during the restoration, we removed the tassels on both ends and kept a small sample. After removing the tassels, we opened the folded seams, showing us more damaged corn. In some places, the canvas base was ripped or falling apart. We had to reweave canvas into these ars. As we started restitching the areas, we had to do damage control on a thread in the damaged areas as the thread on some of the regions became more fragile, and it was falling apart when we tried to catch it under the new stitching.

At the same time, we retired the original knots to remove the bulky effect and prevent further damage.

We attached the heavy-duty cotton lining to ease the pressure on the under threads and the anti-slip str s. Finally, we retired the tassels and trimmed them to one length.