Spring Market at Highpoint

We finished setting up our exhibit at Highpoint market today in the Modern History furniture showroom at 430 N. Wrenn.  We will also have several rugs on the floor in the furniture vignettes. Hope you will stop by if you are coming to market!  Lunch is served daily on the patio...hoping for beautiful weather!!

Rug Inspiration in Barcelona

Travel is a great source of inspiration as we all know.  A few years back, a trip to La Sagrada Familia, designed by Antoni Gaudi, in Barcelona, provided a great idea for a rug design.  Thank you to our client, Rena Feldman of Inview Interior Design in Minneapolis, for a wonderful collaboration!

Ceiling of La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona

Radiance, designed by Julie Dasher

Room designed by Rena Feldman of Inview Interior Design
Rena won a 1st place award for this room from ASID
Photo: Jon Huelskmap, Landmark Photography 

Hand-tufted wool rugs from New York to Minneapolis

We always enjoy and appreciate receiving install photos from our interior designer clients.  Here are couple of beautiful recent installations where our custom rugs were specified.

Thanks to Melissa Pollack at Pollack Interiors Co. in Belmore, NY and Tim Ricker at At Home in Edina, MN for trusting us with their custom rugs.  We love working directly with designers to create special rugs in custom sizes and colors to enhance their spaces.

Space design by Melissa Pollack at Pollack Interiors Co. in Belmore, NY
15'5" X 15'5" Pearl Necklace rug by Julie Dasher Rugs
All wool/Hand-tufted

Space design by Tim Ricker at At Home in Edina, MN
4 X 12 Custom Geometric runner by Julie Dasher Rugs
All wool/Hand-tufted 

Casbah rug in Lake Forest, IL

Here are some photos sent to me by our client ESL Design in Lake Forest, IL.  This room was designed by Elizabeth Scott-Lisk at ESL.  She chose our Casbah design in wool and silk, hand-knotted in Nepal with 100 knots per square inch.  We love the colors and how the geometric design complements the beautiful furnishings in the dining room.

Our Wonderful Team in Nepal

We are so fortunate to have a wonderful team in Nepal including our finishing staff who pay such amazing attention to detail as they sort and trim the wool fibers to define the patterns in our rugs. This 12 X 25 foot rug is our 4-color Flamestitch design being made for a client of Maggie Nielsen Interiors in Chappaque, New York.

Abrash in a rug

Abrash in a rug is a striation created by yarns that are dyed in multiple colors which are fairly close in tone.  Abrash shows a beautiful textural effect which can stand alone without any additional pattern in the design.  The abrash technique can be done in heavy, medium or light variations.

Here is a picture of a rug with heavy abrash that we recently created for Sweet Peas Design in Chicago.  Susan Brunstrum, the owner and head designer, at Sweet Peas had done another rug with us using 3 colors in a heavy abrash in the background of the rug with a cream-colored design in the pattern.  This time, her client wanted just the heavy abrash background and no pattern for a highly subtle, textural rug.  This project didn't leave much for me to do as a designer but I am thrilled with how the rug turned out.

Hand-knotted rug being stretched in the finishing stage

Hand-knotted rug being trimmed in the finishing stage

Beautiful new samples

I can't help but share a picture of 2 new beautiful samples created by our team in Nepal.  The green sample on the right is our English Damask pattern in all Tibetan wool.  This is a strike off for Rebecca Laymon, an interior designer in Raleigh, North Carolina. The sample was woven in 2 different colorways, with half the sample in a mix of green and cream and the other half of the sample in shades of green.  The cream-colored sample is our Quatrefoil pattern in Tibetan wool and raised Chinese silk for Francia Fusik, a designer who has a beautiful new showroom in Windemere, Florida called All In One Decorating Solutions.  Both samples are hand-knotted in Nepal with 100 knots per square inch.

Here is another beautiful wool and silk rug hand-knotted by our expert craftspeople in Nepal.  This rug was produced for an interior designer in Chicago for a client's dining room.  It is our Stately Damask pattern with raised silk.

Thank you for your generosity

As most of you know, there were 2 very powerful earthquakes in Nepal recently resulting in great loss of life and property for the people there.  Julie Dasher Rugs has received tremendous support from many of our clients, friends and family for our supplier in Nepal and for Goodweave. Goodweave is on the ground in Nepal providing a myriad of services for the children, their families and also supporting the efforts to rebuild so that properties are more earthquake resistant in the future. We are truly humbled by your generosity and are happy to report that our factory in Nepal is fully operational.  Our supplier and his team are amazing people and are recovering from this challenge with grace and strength.  We admire them greatly.

In that light, here are some pictures of a beautiful rug they just finished for one of our clients, an interior design firm in Washington, D.C.  The attention to detail and craftsmanship of this talented team are evident.

Attention to Detail and Craftsmanship

We are so fortunate to have such wonderful interior designer clients who give us the opportunity to create beautiful rugs for their projects!  Here is our Livorno pattern with a lovely merlot colored silk in the scrolls of the design.

Chinese silk in a merlot color woven into the scrolls in the Livorno design

Our Livorno design, an oversized damask pattern

Thanks to our expert craftspeople in Nepal who produce an exquisite product

Dare to be special! A custom stair runner and landing rug for a Kenwood home in Minneapolis

Here's a stair runner project we recently completed with interior designer, Janie Delaney, in Minneapolis.

The client wanted something colorful and fresh for her Kenwood home staircase and landing which can be seen as soon as you enter the home.  Janie thinks it is lively and fun but has depth and character so that it works with the house.  In Janie's words...it's "KILLER"!!  Better in person of course and the client loves it!

Installation--the runner was made in 4 sections so as to get a perfect match on each stair.
The project was templated and hand-knotted in Nepal by our wonderful weavers there.

Here is the hand-drawn template and the 4 sections of the runner.

Picture of the landing rug

Close-up...heavy abrash striation in the background of the rug

Landing area...love the zebra pillow

Original digital rendering with final colors selected
Pattern by Julie Dasher

OUR DEBUT AT HIGHPOINT MARKET

Just finished our debut at Highpoint market.  It was a wonderful week of sharing our design aesthetic and products with interior designers from around the world who attended market.  All 50 of our press kits at the Media Center were taken which was totally unexpected!

Networking opportunities were amazing...met Gary Inman of Glave and Holmes who is creating some beautiful furniture designs and has become a "style spotter" extraordinaire.  Visited with Jamie Schactel who created COUEF.  They had a divine space at Inter Hall and a new globally-sourced line of ottomans, tables and chairs that are chic and modern.  Met Sarah Stroh, editor of Rug News and Design, who organized a lovely breakfast billed as the Women's Rug Roundtable...I was with my "tribe" as we chatted about global issues surrounding the rug industry.  Most of my time was spent "manning" the booth and meeting interior designers who were on the hunt for the latest and greatest resources for their projects.

It was so exciting and fun to be at the center of the home furnishings industry.  I can't thank my husband, Thom, enough for all of his support and hard work in making this happen.  I couldn't have done it without him!  xxxoooo

VIDEO: Learn the steps to creating a custom rug

Watch our new video and learn the steps to creating a custom rug.  It is 1, 2, 3... couldn't be simpler.

1.  Pick a pattern from our website...over 350 to choose from...order a colored rendering in your size and colors.

2.  Order a strike off...either 1 X 1 foot or 2 X 2 foot.

3.  Order your beautiful custom rug...be it a work of art or a textural backdrop...it will be unique and special to your room.

Click here to watch our video

Our latest video...we love rugs!

Take a look at this video and enjoy looking at our rugs.  You will see many of our designs...on the loom and in beautiful rooms created by our talented interior designer clients.  Enjoy!

Click here to watch video

Rugs for a Neutral Palette

As much as I love color, I do appreciate the value of using texture and neutral colors as a subtle backdrop.  Here are a few rugs that we've created that showcase the beauty of "beige and gray."  Often times, the texture created with raised wool, raised silk or the type of weave such as our new lock weave can be just the ticket in a space where the client is looking for a timeless, classic aesthetic.

Loopy Diamonds pattern with lock weave and raised wool dots

Quatrefoil pattern with raised silk

Lotus and Wedding Rings pattern with raised wool

Turkish Coffee pattern with heavy abrash in field of rug

The Art of the Custom Rug

Take a look at this video which shows the process of making a handmade rug in Nepal.  From shearing the sheep to dyeing the wool to weaving, cutting, stretching and washing the rug, each rug is a work of art that represents thousands of hours of craftsmanship.  Thanks so much to my manufacturers in Kathmandu, Nepal for supplying the great video clips and to the sheep at the Minnesota State Fair for holding still long enough to get their wool sheared.  Enjoy!

Contact us for a free colored rendering in a custom size and color palette of one of our over 300 rug designs.

Recycling Turkish Treasures for Contemporary Interiors

On a recent trip to Turkey, I spent time visiting bazaars, halis and old palaces and everywhere you turned was an overdyed rug.  No overdyed rugs in the Sultans' palaces of course but rather old Hereke rugs worn down to the nubs.

Particularly popular in Turkey are the overdyed patchwork rugs in a number of varieties.   One of the most intriguing techniques to me are the antique wool rugs, shaved down almost to the warp and weft strands and then overdyed in pieces which are patched together...like a quilt.  The pieces are assembled and then the craftspeople hand sew a blanket stitch around each patched piece.  It's a fun way to add a vintage look in an updated colorway and at the same time, take advantage of a process that is using recycled materials.  This technique appealed to my sensibilities as a lifelong quilter as I have often added a blanket stitch on my sewing machine to an applique on one of my quilts.

If you'd like to see the patchwork samples, we have them in our showroom in 20 beautiful colors!  Suite 542 at International Market Square in Minneapolis.

Showroom in Turkey Featuring Overdyed Rugs

Turkish Overdyed Patchwork Rug at a showroom in Turkey
Color: Citron

Turkish Overdyed Patchwork Rug at a Showroom in Turkey
Color: Jean Blue

Suite 542 at International Market Square in Minneapolis