Berber Rug Making: The Weaving

 "The life of the weaving has come to its end. Not so, please God, the lives of my household"

Said Naima while cutting the carpet loose from the loom.

 

The Weaving:

Once the loom has been mounted (Please check our Mounting the loom article) The weaver can proceed and start working on her art piece. Berber women use 2 major techniques: Knotted, Flat Weave, and Weft substitution. 

1- Knotted:

This technique produces a fluffy thick pile rug. The wool strands are knotted on a weft consisting of warp threads (vertical threads) and weft yarns (horizontal threads). The KPSI is determined by counting the number of nodes per inch (2.54 cm) on the horizontal and vertical wires. The density can thus range from 40 to 1000 knots per square inch. A hand-knotted carpet will be considered qualitative for a density close to 200 KPSI.