Finishing woven art

1The last 10 per cent

A weaving is not finished when the last row is beaten down. Loose tails, a crooked fringe or a piece that curls at the edges can spoil hours of good work. Finishing is what turns a practice piece into an artwork you can give, sell at a craft market or hang on a wall. Professional weavers spend real time on it, and examiners look for it.

2Key vocabulary

• Header and footer: a few rows of tight plain weave at the start and end of a piece. They lock the design in place so it cannot slide off the warp.
• Tail: a loose end of weft left where a colour started or stopped.
• Fringe: the loose warp ends left hanging after the warp is cut and tied.
• Overhand knot: the simplest knot: make a loop in the threads and pass the ends through it.

3Make it: finish your weaving

1. Weave the footer. End with 6 rows of plain weave in strong yarn, pressed down firmly.
2. Weave in the tails. Turn the loom over. Thread each tail onto a tapestry needle, run it 2 to 3 cm up or down the back, alongside a warp thread, and trim the end close. Never knot tails together: knots make lumps.
3. Take it off the loom. Cardboard loom: bend the card gently and lift the warp loops out of the notches. Stick loom: cut the warps close to the bars, only two at a time, so the weaving never loses all its tension at once.
4. Tie the warp ends. Take two neighbouring warps, tie them in an overhand knot, and slide the knot up until it sits against the last row. Work across the whole edge.
5. Trim the fringe. Lay a ruler across the fringe and cut along it so all the ends are the same length.
6. Hang it. Slide the top loops of a cardboard-loom weaving onto a straight stick, or stitch the top edge to a stick with matching yarn. Tie a cord to both ends of the stick.

Worked example: planning the fringe

Gatete's stick-loom weaving has 16 warp threads. Tied in pairs, that makes 16 ÷ 2 = 8 knots. After cutting, each warp end is 10 cm long. The knot uses about 2 cm, and he wants a fringe 6 cm long, so he trims 10 − 2 − 6 = 2 cm from each end with a ruler as his guide.

4Judging the finished piece

Check your work, and your classmates', against these criteria:

For example, a label might read: “Kivu Evening”, wool and banana fibre on cotton warp, 15 cm × 20 cm, by Mutesi.

5Look closely

This cloth was woven from raffia palm fibre in the Kuba kingdom, in today's Democratic Republic of the Congo, around 1909. It is plain weave, the same move you have learned. Look at the top and bottom edges: the loose ends form a fringe. The darker bands were made by weaving with darker fibre. Among the Kuba, men wove this plain raffia cloth on looms, and women often decorated it afterwards with embroidery, which you will study in the next unit.

Practice