Often cleaners will dye test the front of the rug before cleaning. That's good. You should ALWAYS do that, because the rug kiss of death is when you say out loud "oh I know that rug won't bleed"... and then you skip the dye test. Nothing worse than the dreaded RUG JINX! We don't allow any of our team to say "oh no problem!" in our rug shop... because that is always the rug that goes weird on us. =) So... a cleaner sent me this rug help photo because he noticed pink dye bleed on a rug that was not pink. The pink was coming not from the face fibers but from the WEFTS of the rug. And this is not an uncommon occurrence. Here's the rug: And here's the post I made on how to test the dyes, and what to do about it. Just remember to dye test FRONT and BACK - and that will help keep you from having a disaster on your hands. CLICK HERE ==> Rug Hidden Disaster: Wefts That Bleed Hope this keeps a few of you out of trouble. Lisa
Yeah that exact same thing happened to me with one of the rugs I got off of http://www.arearugs.com - not happy about it at all Thanks for the post and the good info though!
Thea Sand one of the great rug cleaners showed me an Afghan tribal rug with bleeding wefts. The wefts were actually strips of t-shirt material in some hideous color. One thing that most people do not know is that used clothing donated in the US will often have the worst peices end up in places like Afghanistan. Sweaters and woolens are unraveled and the yarn is recycled into rugs. I have not seen many t-shirt wefts but I have seen a wide range of different fiber types in one rug. These recycled fiber rugs can look normal but present a minefield of challenges for cleaners. So the next time that you think it looks like hand spun wool, cotton, polyester, acrylic, rayon, etc... in the same rug it just might be. Best wishes, barry O'Connell www.PersianCarpetGuide.com
Lisa, I appreciate your suggestion to test hot instead of waiting overnight. Will you comment on why you test with water only instead of using your cleaning solution? Wouldn't the use of a surfactant possibly cause dye migration that water alone wouldn't? Thanks.
David - I test with hot water because my cleaning solution is on the acid side. Most cleaners use cleaning solutions on the alkaline side (which can bleed acid dyes in rugs). So you are right - you want to test with both if you plan on using something NOT neutral or acid pH. THanks for the question! =)
