by ROSEMARIE GLANVILLE

Created on: June 14, 2008   Last Updated: June 18, 2008

We love the feel of carpet beneath our feet. It is durable, versatile, beautiful, soft and warm, but have you any idea how it is made? I hope you will be wiser, once you have read this article.

First I would like to take a quick look at the history of carpet. I don't know about you, but I have always believed that carpet was a modern invention. Yet there is evidence of sheep and goats being sheared for hair and wool, and spun and woven, as early as 6000 BC.

Machine woven wool carpets are made on enormous looms that weave together the backing, and the carpet yarn, resulting in a luxurious, often intricately patterned, high performance carpet. Sheep wool is often the favored material for carpet making, as it is heat retaining, water-repellent, and has great elasticity.

Carpet making has changed over the years, according to social, economical, and fashion climates. However until the 1950's carpet making was little more than a cottage industry. This changed overnight with synthetic fibers and tufting.

Tufting involves a row of eyed needles, which are threaded with yarn. These penetrate the backing fabric to form a tuft. This can be left as a loop, cut and loop, or a combination of both.

Carpet is made from three layers:

Stitches or tufts that make the pile
The backing where the yarn is inserted
Latex, a bonding agent to hold fibers in place

Tufted carpet is usually made with synthetics like polyester, nylon, olefin, and natural products like cotton and wool. This has to be prepared and spun before the tufting.

Textiles like cotton and wool used to be spun by hand with a spinning wheel, but most commercial yarns today are spun in spinning mills. The techniques and tools may be different, but the four main processes remain the same. These are loosening and cleaning, carding, drawing and spinning.

Synthetic fibers can be produced as either BCF or stable. The first is ready for the tufting process, but stable yarns, such as acrylic and polyester fibers, have to be spun, twisted and heat set.

The yarn for your carpet is now prepared for the tufting process that I mentioned above. Once tufted, it will be ready for the carpet dye.

Color can be added in the extrusion process, but it is more common for the carpet dye to be applied after tufting. The rolls of white tufted carpet are dyed in an unbroken process, which is flexible, fast and economical.

The pre-dissolved carpet dye is uniformly applied, and pattern can be made with the use of a computer-controlled screen. Up to twelve

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