About rugs

It is a surprising fact that on the finer canvases, whether the stitch is pile or flat makes comparatively little difference provided that the length of the pile is not out of proportion to the thickness of the wool used.

If too much wool is ordered it will be seldom that the surplus cannot be worked into a later rug, while if a colour runs out before a rug is finished and cannot be matched exactly, it is only in the best Oriental tradition to use one or more changes of shade (within reason) in the middle of an area of one general colour.

In fact, as will be further discussed in Chapters Five and Seven, changes or "breaks" in background colour are frequently made deliberately to avoid a monotonous appearance.

However there are, of course, types of design in which such breaks are undesirable and where this is likely to be so, it is wise to err on the side of over-estimating when ordering wool.