Rug fringes. They look beautiful when new but often go downhill from there. Cleaning oriental rugs presents challenges, and the ever present one is how well the fringes look when you're finished.

The fringes I'm referring to are the integral fringes on hand knotted oriental rugs, that are overwhelmingly cotton. These fringes are the same warp yarns running lengthwise throughout the rug. When cut off the loom, extra length of warp yarns are left to be tied and knotted as the decorative fringe. In a few specialty rugs, the fringes are either wool or goat hair, and on some rugs, all silk.

On area rugs that are not hand knotted, a separate fringe is often sewn onto both ends of the rug. These fringes could be cotton, rayon, nylon, olefin and other fibers in the synthetic pile rugs.

The focus of this column is on the cotton fringes, as these are the most common and the basis of most of the complaints. The cream, tan or white cotton fringe just loves to soak up dirt, soils and bleeding dye from the pile yarns. It will often untwist, mat or bloom when being wet cleaned, or turn tanbrown from jute present in some backing yarns or cellulosic browning. Some fringes clean up great and others look a horror! So how do different cleaners approach fringe cleaning of cotton fringe yarns?

Method 1: Pretend they don't exist or can't be made better.

Some cleaners either don't want to know about fringes, and might even pretend that they're not there, because they too often have trouble or call-backs on them. In these situations, fringes are cleaned just about the same as the rest of the rug, given no special treatment, no hand cleaning or grooming. The approach (sadly) is "Oh, it's the fringes. They always come out looking like that. Can't help it."

Method 2: The "Natural Look" in fringes.

More conservative cleaners and restorers (even the experts) may treat fringes with cautious concern, but choose to leave them in the "natural" state. The fringes will be hand cleaned, brushed and/or groomed, but not subjected to stronger cleaning agents or specialty chemicals. The fringe color will remain about the same, or even darken slightly. A trace of color or fugitive dye could permeate some of the fringe. After cleaning, the cotton fringe is close to the way the rug first came in, or might even look marginally worse. If the customer inquires or complains, the response is often, "We tried to clean them as best we could, with special handling and grooming. But after all, they are fringes! And keep vacuuming them, they'll eventually wear away-then we can replace them with brand new ones."

Method 3: Specialty chemicals, with extreme care.

This method is a slight modification of method 2, in that cellulosic browning treatments, tannin spot removers, mild bleach (e.g. 3% hydrogen peroxide or perborate) or strong cleaning agents (e.g. traffic lane cleaner, dye spotters) are tried on problem fringes. These help to Iighten a discolored or browned fringe, remove some fugitive dye, and improve the fringe appearance somewhat. The fringe may not look white, and may still show some irregularity. Still, with rinsing and quick drying, the cotton fringe is still fully strong and maximally serviceable.

Most method 3 cleaners probably use hydrogen peroxide or "color safe", oxygen bleach such as Snowy or Clorox II. These mild bleaches do a reasonable and safe job, but expect some customers to call back for even "whiter fringes'.

Method 4: Aggressive specialty chemicals and treatment.

This approach aims to get a white or off-white fringe back to all white, or even whiter, after cleaning. There will be no fugitive dye color either, as the discoloration and/or browning will have been bleached out or stripped out. Reducing agents such as sodium bisulfite or sodium hydrosulfite color removers are safer for the fringe, but these are very slow acting and often hit-or-miss. Oxidizing bleaches such as stronger hydrogen peroxide (6%, 8% or 10%) can be tried, but require dilution down from higher concentrations. Some European members use a combination of hydrogen peroxide and potassium permanganate, but I'm not sure of the exact mixture.

Most cleaners, however, use standard chlorine bleach (it's about 5% sodium hypochlorite). It's cheap, fast, and a bit dangerous. Bleach should be diluted, rinsed out or treated with an anti-chlor to reduce long term damage to the cotton fringe. Be advised, however, that if someone spills or drips any chlorine bleach onto or into the wool pile yarns, they will be quickly damaged. And if the chlorine bleach is not diluted, rinsed or neutralized, the fringe will surely, and more quickly, be worn out and vacuumed away. See method 5 for the chlorine problems and dangers.

Method 5: The all-out fringe attack.

This is the dangerous, risky, strong attack on those ugly fringe problems after cleaning. Undiluted household strength chlorine bleach is sponged, tamped, carefully sprayed or painted onto the combed out fringe yarns. The bleach is allowed to dry, and the fringes look great! But the cotton will be left to weaken over time by the bleach residue and the fringes will eventually start to look straggly, ragged, and irregular. In time, the yarns can be broken by hand, as the cotton has lost some of its original strength.

There's also the matter of the chlorine odor. If the bleach is not rinsed, you and your customer can still smell that bleach residue for a long time. Not a very pleasant scent to all parties concerned.

And then there are the odd fringes that readily turn pink (usually permanently), when treated with full strength chlorine bleach. I'm not certain why this occurs. Perhaps it is an unusual effect on an optical brightener that turns the off-white cotton fringe this very pale red or pink.

Summary

How do you rate your fringe skills, by method 5-4-3-2-1? Are you a 3-4, a 2-3, or on the extremes at 1 (scared stiff) or 5 (a heavy hitter)? There's safety in the middle ranks (3), with conservatives to the right (at 2) and liberals to the left (at 4). Fringe cleaning is just like politics, and sometimes just as nasty and unsatisfying.

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Article provided by the Association of Specialists in Cleaning and Restoration (ASCR).