How I Learned to Miniweave Part Three: A Rug is a Rug is a Rug?

To learn to weave is one thing; it's a craft like many others and requires practice and repetition for the weaver to become proficient and skilled. To make a miniwoven rug was an entirely different thing. There are thousands of patterns and yarns and colours and textures and effects, and I wanted to try them all at once, being absolutely sure they will turn into miniature rugs immediately. I would work with some fancy yarn and stay up to 3 a.m. and absolutely love it only to see it in the morning with rested eyes and calmer brain, and totally hate it. I had so many variations using all kind of yarns and patterns and yet for the longest time none of them seemed to work. Everything I made looked like I bought a piece of regular cloth and cut it up to a smaller size. It took a long time to develop a "Theory of Miniature Cloth Perception" as I came to call my explanation of this phenomenon of miniweaving. Hear me out.

When we look at a miniature not knowing it's a miniature, we have no reaction to the image aside from what we would have if we looked at the image on our regular plane of reality. But when we put a miniature next to something that is obviously not a miniature, this happens: our brain sees something that is impossible and gets confused. Let me try to explain that on an example of a picture of a couch in a hand. It confuses our brain: these objects should not exist like this, and we are struggling to put them together on the same plane of reality. There are no such tiny couches in real life to be used, they exist only as a distortion of reality. A regular couch sized down by 10-20% is still a real couch, just made to be small. A regular couch sized down 12 times is not a regular couch any more. I think one of the major appeal of miniatures is exactly that distortion of reality which gives our brain something to overcome like a puzzle.

But textile is different. Textile exists in reality in very many sizes, from very rough and large weaves of potato sacks to super fine silk scarves. When you size weaving down, no matter how much, it does not become a miniature cloth that doesn't exist in reality: it just becomes a finer cloth which exists a plenty. So, using superfine yarn to make miniature rugs will not look like a rug, but like a finer piece of cloth cut up to a small size. I could not overcome that perceptual obstacle: everything I made looked just like a cut-up piece of regular cloth. Using coarser yarn made its thickness out of proportion. Of all the learning and experimenting I did this was the most difficult stage: searching for the proper combination of yarn size, warp setting, and overall design.

I needed to understand what makes a carpet look like a carpet and use those characteristics on a smaller scale. I was searching for the essence of a carpet. (If you are laughing at my philosophical, ontological approach, there'll be lot of that to look forward to.)

One of the strongest factors was the design of it: its rectangle shape in common 5'x7' or 5'x8' size; certain standard elements, particularly in traditional carpets, such as header, footer, borders, centre medallions, stripes; the fringes which are creating huge impact in the transformation of a piece of cloth into a miniature carpet. All these elements are very successfully brought to scale in petite point embroidery carpets, but in miniweaving they were not enough. Embroidery replicates the look of so-called pile carpets which are woven on the same "grid" as embroidery, comparable to pixelated images: each stitch is a pixel and the combination of them will give you motifs you seek. The grid (canvas) is invisible and the colours of the stitches will be exactly as you choose them, interacting with each other in their motif shapes. Petite point embroidery is not made to be worn like a cloth, so it does not associate with regular cloth.

Weaving is different. It cannot mimic the pile carpets as it's not based on pixels. In the weaving I use for my rugs, which is called balanced weaving, you see both the grid and the pixels, so the colours interact all the time with each other. The warp, those vertical ends, are the grid, and they are visible and add to the colour and texture, which affects the colours of the weft, making them blended. This gives the woven cloth a very distinct look, and once you use patterns common for this technique, you get a very distinct design which differs greatly from pile carpets. You get regular woven cloth.

The other type of weaving, called weft-faced weaving, which I teach in my tutorials, is different yet: the warp is covered and you cannot see it, but the technique still doesn't resemble a pixelated image. It is more so as if the image is consisting of lines, like those early dot printers going from one end of the paper to the other, but instead of dots, imagine they pull lines. This weaving, known as traditional flat weaving, has its own characteristic look and designs. It is no wonder that the most common motifs in kilims are just stripes.

Therefore, I had to explore rugs made in the same technique, study their patterns, design, and colors, and find the proper scale for the ones I make. That meant that I do not have to go to extra fine yarn to get down to a finest cloth available; quite contrary, I had to preserve some roughness that may even be a bit exaggerated, but it provided proper texture for our perception to see it as a rug, not as a cloth. Combined with design common to flat woven rugs, they finally (FINALLY!) started looking like rugs. By now I have spent thousands of dollars on equipment, materials, and books, and hundreds of hours perusing internet and weaving forums (I am not exaggerating that either), but I have no regrets: this beautiful hobby gave me so much to look forward to, to explore, to overcome, to create, that I could not wish for my money to be better spent. To each their own. :-)

Most of these weaves in real life look rustic and very organic: they do not share the elaborate precision common to pile carpets. They became very popular in later years, adding warmth and authenticity to modern design. They are suitable for seaside cottages, modern lofts, romantic Bohemian style rooms, and any other interior we wish to soften and make less "perfect" in a sense of machine-made perfection. I followed that trend and experimented with all kinds of miniature interior and found them refreshing and original. I am in love with them, and I can only hope there would be people out there to like them as much. They are definitely a true hand-made labour of love that can make a huge difference in modern miniaturism. I can only hope I get to keep on making them and teaching them to miniweaving enthusiasts.

Below: Contemporary miniature display (1:12) with one of my gentler rugs, brightening the whole room. Hand-tied fringes. Coffee table is made from art by Nada M.