The tartan throw is now half finished – this wet weather is certainly helping! Yesterday I had a trip up to Townsend to do some final measuring of spaces for the Fiber Arts Festival. All went well and we managed to squeeze in one more vendor making us full+. On return I checked the studio build for drips/leaks and as there was nothing significant, started on the weaving.

I decided to have a fringe on all 4 sides on this throw. Normal end fringes are taken care of with the loom waste and simple knotting will look fine on this project. To add the side fringes meant adding a floating selvedge beyond the last warp end at the distance to make an approximately 6″ fringe (a little less after knotting). The yarn for this needs to be reasonably slippery to allow the weft yarn to loop around and then slide towards the weaver as progressive picks are added. I used some very slippery nylon cord I had in the workshop, looped it onto the breast beam then through the reed, no heddles and weighted over the back beam. When ready to wind on I take some scissors, stretch the weft loops away from the floating selvedge and cut it in a group. Then working from the previously knotted edge take the appropriate number of weft picks and tie a simple overhead knot (I do groups of 4).

Depending where in the pattern I stop to wind on, this may leave either two or no ‘left over picks’. If two then they get knotted into the next batch by adding the first two of the new block to make up the 4. Overall this is a fairly tidy finish. There is no problem of the edge of the weaving drawing in unevenly as the edge is controlled by the knots.

When winding on, once the cloth has wrapped around the cloth beam care should be taken so that the knots are flipped up before they go around the beam to ensure they don’t get under the cloth and start impacting the evenness of the tension. As they move around the beam they’ll drop down and eventually wrap (outside the edge of the cloth – so no impact on tension).

More rain today, but I do have to finish fitting the garage door so weaving will wait until tonight.