Question: What can be done to remove ground–in soil from an Oriental rug’s cotton fringe?  Can I use bleach or should I stick to a reducing agent? Thanks. 

 Answer from Jeff Bishop, SCRT Technical Director:

Most hand-knotted Oriental rug fringe is made of cotton or wool, although silk, linen or jute – even polypropylene – can be used.   Neither reducing or oxidizing agents are appropriate when removing heavy or ground-in soil from a rug’s cotton or wool fringe.  What does work, however, is an anionic detergent, which most cleaners know as a foaming shampoo. 

 Here’s the procedure:

1. After cleaning and drying the rug first to see what result can be achieved on the fringe, move the dry rug to a molded plastic “fringe cleaning” table, which has the rear legs blocked up on 2” pavers so that excess solution can run away from the
2. Mix the anionic detergent at the highest concentrate allowed according to label directions.
3. Apply the anionic detergent solution to the fringe in a saturation application, but avoid wetting wool pile yarns.
4. Agitate the detergent into the fringe with aggressive brush action; use tamping action on fringe knots that have heavy soiling.
5. Give the detergent at least 10 minutes to work at suspending the soil.
6. Mix an acid rinse solution and pour it into the solution tank of a hot water extraction unit, preferably one with a built-in
7. With as hot a solution as you can generate, inject and extract acid rinse solution, starting at the edge of the rug’s pile and working down to the fringe ends.
8. After working across the entire fringe, repeat the extraction process working in the opposite direction using hot and slow extraction passes.
9. Repeat steps 3-8, as necessary, until the desired cleaning is achieved.
10. Using vacuum only, extract all remaining excess moisture from the fringe and from the rug’s pile edge.
11. Groom the fringe to eliminate tangles.
12. Force dry the fringe by placing the rug on the edge of a drying/blocking table with the fringe hanging off in the airstream created by an air mover.

 Remember that most fringe is not supposed stark white; it’s usually off-white or even tan in color.  Except in highly unusual circumstances, don’t even think about bleaching it!  However, a reducer-shampoo may be appropriate, when browning is combined with soil.  

 All the procedures for removing ground-in soil, cellulosic browning, and dye migration are demonstrated in a quality IICRC-approved Rug Cleaning Technician course.