Religion
In reply to the discussion: Religious Symbolism in the Islamic Prayer Rug [View all]MineralMan
(146,317 posts)The orange section is just knotted pile, like the rest of the rug. It's surrounded by black pile. Same with the border. I alternated black and white knots to frame those. The irregularity that looks like stitching is just the irregularity of knot placement in the rows. Remember that this was my first attempt, with rather a coarse pile density. 10 knots per inch.
The warp on that primitive loom is cotton cord, simply wrapped on the horizontal frame. I cut notches in the frame sticks to keep the alignment. I copied a very old photo of a rug loom to manage alternating the warp cords. A wooden slat, which is no longer present, was woven through the warp to raise one set of cords when turned. The alternate set of warp cords were raised by a heddle board and string loops, which you can see at the top of the loom. A long flat shuttle of wood carried the weft threads.
It was a slow process, but weft weaving was the least time-consuming part of the work. There is a single weft course woven above each row of pile, beaten down with a coarse hair comb.
The larger loom I build for the second project used the same strategies, but was build of 2 X 4 lumber. I used the same methods for weaving the weft, though. Very primitive, but that was my goal.
I used the Turkish or Ghiordes knot for the pile. It was easier for my clumsy big fingers to tie than the Persian knot: