Give a plush piece of carpet to Merilu Dillard and Cynthia Webb and they’re likely to draw on it, cut it up and scrape it.
It’s not that they’re destructive; they’re creative.
The mother-daughter team (Dillard is the mom; Webb is the daughter) started a business known as Creative Carpet Art here about a year ago to produce sculpted carpeting.
Using different techniques, the two transform simple pieces of plush carpet into area rugs, floor mats and wall hangings with designs ranging from company logos to colorful flowers.
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Dillard said that elaborately sculpted carpet is something most people are unfamiliar with. “They think in terms of a plain area rug with just a border.”
But carpet sculpting goes well beyond that. It can involve three techniques: inlaying, carving and bas-relief.
Puzzle-solver
With inlaying, a design is cut out of the main piece of carpet and different colored pieces of carpet are put in its place to create a picture, design or lettering.
“You are cutting one piece at a time. It’s like putting a puzzle together,” Webb said.
Hand-carving uses special tools to carve a design directly into a rug or carve the edges of inlaid pieces to give them a three-dimensional effect.
Bas-relief sculpture involves shaving away the background area around a design so that the design stands out. Webb said the design for a sculpted rug can be created from scratch or copied from a wallpaper pattern, tile or other decorative item so that the rug ties in with the rest of the room. Designs can range from a floral pattern for an area rug to a Mickey Mouse design for a child’s room.
“It’s personal to the customer. allows you to design your own carpet,” she said.
Dillard said another benefit is that the carving and sculpting techniques give the carpet a feeling of depth that other area rugs lack.
“It’s not just a carpet, it’s artwork,” Webb said.
And it’s artwork that’s meant to be used, not just admired. Dillard said careful seaming and backing techniques make sculpted rugs durable enough to handle repeated foot traffic and regular cleaning.
A perfect fit
Nancy Robison of Interior Designs in Red Bluff, Calif., said she had a sculpted rug made for one of her clients by Creative Carpet Art because she wanted the colors in the rug to identically match those in the home.
“You can buy carpets like that, but not in the right colors . . . Plus, you can get any size that you need. You can make it to fit exactly,” she said.
Sherry Stewart of Burbank, Calif., heard of Creative Carpet Art through a friend and contracted for an area rug for her bedroom. Working with Webb and Dillard over the phone and by fax, the three came up with an inlaid flower design.
“I wanted something that was different, and this is different,” Stewart said.
Prices for sculpted carpets vary depending on the intricacy of the design, the types of materials used, size of the project and the time required to create them. But they don’t come cheap.
Dillard said prices start at $500 and could run up to $25,000. As an example, she said a 4-by-6-foot area rug with an inlaid rose pattern in her home would sell for about $1,200.
In addition to area rugs, wall-to-wall carpeting also can be sculpted. However, for inlaid designs, which use different pieces of colored carpeting, the work needs to be done before the carpet is put down.
Dillard and Webb decided to get into the carpet sculpting business because they wanted to give up their office jobs and work out of their homes. Both had experience in dress and costume design and wanted to launch a business that would tap their creative talents. They attended a training course in Southern California to learn basic carpet sculpting techniques.