Woven Fabric

Woven fabric means simply that the fabric is woven by a machine that interlaces two yarns running at right angles to each other. The most widely used group of decorative upholsteries sold in the United States consists of woven fabrics. These woven fabrics can be natural, such as linen and cotton, or man-made fibers like polyester and olefin. In most cases, fabrics are blends of various fibers like the popular cotton-polyester blend. The most popular types of weaves are as follows:

Jacquard weaves are fabrics with differently colored yarns or fibers woven into highly decorative designs. These weaves are most often found in traditional furniture styles.
Pile fabrics have loops or cut fibers standing up densely from the surface to form a three-dimensional texture. Depending on color and design, pile fabrics can be appropriate for traditional or contemporary furniture.
Textured fabrics are woven from yarns that have been processed to give them more bulk, crimp, stretch, or otherwise altered. Chenille is an example of a very popular textured weave. Textured fabrics are often woven to resemble antique, homespun cloth.
Plain-woven fabrics consist of one color with their character resulting from the type of yarn or fiber used. Depending on the texture, plain weaves can be used on formal or informal furniture and with a variety of styles.
Printed fabrics are first woven and then printed with a decorative design. Chintz and polished cotton are examples of fabrics that are often used for prints, however textured fabrics with blends of nylon, rayon, cotton, and polyester fibers are also often printed.

Non-Woven Fabric

Non-woven fabrics are produced by the bonding and or interlocking of fibers. These fabrics can be made by mechanical, chemical, thermal, or solvent means, or with an adhesive, or any combination of these. Examples of non-woven fabrics include:

Vinyl, which may or may not be laminated to a fabric backing. Vinyls are preferred on furniture that is subject to hard usage. Also called Naugahyde®, vinyl is often thought of as a substitute for leather, and can be printed in a variety of patterns.
Flocked fabrics are made by gluing pieces of cut fibers onto a flat woven cloth base. These fibers form a three-dimensional surface much like pile. Flocked velvet is an example of this kind of fabric.
Knitted fabrics are made by interlooping one or more sets of yarns. This is a relatively inexpensive way of manufacturing fabric.
Suede-like fabrics, such as Ultrasuede® are often used in decorative upholstered furniture covers to give the look and feel of genuine suede, without using animal hides and usually at less cost.

Gathering

The first step in making a rug is gathering the raw materials. Traditionally most tribal rugs are made of wool sheared from the sheep twice a year, in the spring and in the autumn. Generally the wool from the spring shearing is considered superior and is used for making most rugs, bags, and clothing. Wool from the autumn shearing or from dead animals is less fine and is used mainly for making felts or tent fabrics. In some areas, tribal weavers also use cotton. Although cotton is actually more stable than wool, it is less durable and often more expensive than wool, so its use is limited. Finally, a much smaller number of rugs are made using silk, which is typically purchased from traders who bring it from manufacturing centers far away from the tribal areas.

Yarn

The first preparation step is to clean the fibers. This is done by washing and combing (or carding) Spinning Wool the fibers several times. Once clean, the raw fibers are spun into threads using a weighted object called a spindle. When a twist of the raw wool or cotton is attached to the spindle and the spindle is spun and dropped, it pulls the fibers out of the bunch and winds them into a long thread. After several threads have been made, they are in turn spun together to form a yarn. Typically two or three threads will be used to form a yarn. Yarn is normally spun in the opposite direction from the threads so that the fibers will bind together more tightly.

Dyeing

After the yarn is spun, it is treated with a substance that allows dye to be absorbed and fixed into its fibers, most commonly alum and iron sulfate. Once the yarn has been treated it is ready to be dyed. Traditionally the dyes used are made from natural local plants. For example, the madder plant yields a red dye, milkweed and buckthorn produce yellow, dyer's woad and indigo produce blue, while browns and blacks can be made using walnut shells or iron filings. Since the late nineteenth century, some tribal weavers have also been using factory-produced chemical dyes. Most yarn is dyed in batches. Sometimes when the dye runs out in the middle of the dyeing process, the batch is finished with another dye lot. This produces yarns with slightly different colors that, when woven together, produce a chromatic shading effect called abrash, which is greatly admired by many Western collectors.

Weaving

Once the yarns are spun and dyed, the weaving process begins. First a set number of yarns are stretched in close parallel rows around a wooden frame called a loom. These yarns, called warps, determine the basic size and shape of the rug. Alternate warps are then attached to horizontal bars called heddles. When the heddles are raised and lowered, they create a space between the warps that is called the shed. Another yarn, called a weft, is attached to a weighted object, called a shuttle, and passed back and forth through the shed. Alternating which warps are raised and which are lowered produces a fabric of interlocked yarns that is called a plainweave. Sometimes each weft will be beaten down on top of the previous one to create a fabric in which only the wefts are visible. This type of fabric is called a tapestry weave (or kilim weave.) Other times the wefts will be wrapped around the warps according to a set pattern to create a more textured fabric that is known as a sumak weave (or brocade weave.) Finally, the weaver can tie extra bits of yarn to the warps between one or more rows of wefts. The extra bits of yarn, which can be tied in either symmetric or asymmetric knots opening either to the left or to the right, stick up above the warp and weft foundation to create a pile weave. In some cases, several different weaving techniques may be employed together to produce a rug that has a variety of textures and visual effects.