The Carpet Makers

Blurb

The Carpet Makers, a novel by Andreas Eschbach published in 2005 by Tor Books, is an English translation of the German Die Haarteppichknüpfer. The Tor edition features a foreword by Orson Scott Card.
The book is set on a planet whose sole industry is weaving elaborate rugs. The carpets are made of human hair and require a lifetime of work to complete. The book is a series of inter-related stories that give increasingly more detail on the nature and purpose of the rugs and why the universe has tens of thousands of planets solely devoted to making such a thing, each thinking they are the only one.
There is a predecessor to the The Carpet Makers titled Quest, which has not been translated into English so far.