The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California
Carpets And Rugs
In printing the thread the printer has before him a vertical strip from the pattern. See Figure 21, Plate I. For an eight-wire carpel for example each unit or square in the pattern must correspond to 1/8 inch on the face of the rug. The length of thread required to make this 1/8 inch depends upon the height of the pile. If we assume that the length of thread thus required is twice the actual length on the carpet face, each unit on the face of the drum will be 2/8 or 1/4 inch. Therefore, each square on the pattern paper will correspond to 1/4 inch on the face of the drum. In order to facilitate the actual work of printing, the strip of pattern from which the printer works is marked with numbers along the side to correspond with the cumbered notches on his drum.
He begins with the lightest colors first, so that in case a mistake is made he can cover them with darker colors. Each color is mixed and placed in its own pan before the process of printing is started. Then, beginning with the lightest color, the first pan is inserted in the carrier. The printer then reads from his design the numbers on which this color is used. Turning the drum to the corresponding notches, the pan is made to travel across the drum over and back for each position. In this way he takes one color after another until the full drum has been printed.
In removing the wet yarn from the drum, great care must be exercised not to let one color lap over the other. To prevent this, boxes filled with wet sawdust are brought to the drum and the yarn removed by partially collapsing the drum and lifting it off as a skein. It is then carefully laid on top of the sawdust and placed in a steam tight chamber where it is subjected to the action of live steam, which sets the dye and prevents it running from one part of the yarn to another.
The dye for printing purposes is mixed with a very fine grade of flour which remains in the yarn as a sticky, pasty mass. After the dye is set, this can be safely washed out and the yarn when dried will become soft and pliable.
Evidently from the time a skein of yarn is printed, its identity must be maintained. After drying, the various skeins are thrown into bins which are laid out according to a system that permits the proper grouping of the various skeins. When all the skeins of a given run have been completed, they are wound onto spools and these spools are then stored in racks which are laid out in such a way as to indicate automatically when the number of spools required for a carpet is complete.
