What can I do better? (pics)

[joey895]

I did a repair today and I'm just not happy with the results, surely there is something I could have done differently. Notice in the after pic you can see the seems of the patch. It seemed to fit well but I worked for 2.5 hours and just could not make them go away. As you can see the area is next to a wall, not in a traffic area so that's not an issue.

The situation is this exact carpet is not made anymore according to the manufacturer but the lady did not want to just move the orange stain to the closet, so what she decided to do was use the closet for the donor but she found a sample that was a very close match to put back in the closet instead of the stain. It turns out we should have just used the sample piece as the main donor because it was so close to exact, it would have saved us from have 2 patches. The last 2 pics are of the closet.

Ps I had to take the last 2 with my phone cause my camera battery died, so that's why the difference in coloring.

Before

Cut out

After

Closet cut out

Closet after

 

[harryhides]

Closet insert looks great Joey or is that because the camera quality was so low?

Some trypes of carpet seam up easily and some just don't.
Did you cut with a blade or with a hot knife and did you angle back a bit when cutting ?

 

[Harry Myers]

Joey it looks like it can be overlapped in some areas . Usually when you see a dark line they are gapped. Most important before putting it together make sure it fits perfect. Now did you use a kool glide iron. If so on a patch I prefer a ammonia based latex not acrylic. Tractor the patch and what you see then is what your end result should be.

 

[joey895]

The closet did come out better than the other one but NOT as good as the pic makes it seem.

I used a hot knife. I did not angle it, hadn't even thought of that but it makes sense it would be better.

I did use a kool glide. I wasn't aware there were different types of kool glide tape.

Looking down into the fibers it really looked like it was a tight fit. Honestly my thought was maybe too tight and maybe the donor was raised slightly higher than the rest of the carpet. Although not enough for me to be able to really tell for sure.

I'm thinking I need to make or get some templates. I felt like I was really careful in my cutting and I still had to do some trimming just to get it as good as I got it.

 

[Harry Myers]

Joey the only time I use a hot knife is on an woven olefin seam. Or for making carved area rugs. Next time use a knife and rubber latex and do what I said . See for yourself .

 

[Stevea]

Joey,

For what it is worth, as close as those were to the walls, you could have marked it out on the back amd made your cuts from the back, at the very least the donor piece. On cut pile, when you cut from the back you are able to manipultae the pieces and make the edges match just about perfect.

Here is a large damaged stain area close to the edge

here is a brief shot working this very large insert (notice I had to piece together the donor piece, used the kool glide); this is a very large (32" x 32") donor piece. tough to do this from the front and not have it show readily by working from the back on a cut pile, the use of hand sewing is a great aid to make sure the edges are good and tight When possible, I always will make a repair like this from the back


A template can be a very good item to use, cutting from the back or face cut and then cut the donor from the back, just another tool but on large items like this the measuring can trouble some. If you need help with a template, PM me and I will try to help for the future.

Here is a brief part of making the large donor piece, the main thing I want to show you is the portable flooring I carry with me. This is very important to be able to secure what we are working on.



Hope this helps a little for your question of what might help.

Here is a brief clip of use of a template. I show this in my classes to help with cutting a precision measurement from the back of a cut pile. (Whiskers allowed me to take this of him, credit goes to him for the model)