A Way to Deal With Fringe Other than the Usual Treatments

Update: The masks are coming along. There is a pocket for a filter and a wire is stitched in so it fits over the nose and stays under eyeglasses.

ALERT!! MOTH HOLE TIP: Try using a Fuzz Buster or a soft brush to pick up stray fibers directly from your sweater—it doesn’t take much to patch a tiny moth hole and the color match is perfect.
From Diana Rollo



“The viewer must know that the last weft is secure.”…

Lillian Elliott

Sometimes I like how the fringe emerges from the structure of the woven cloth. Sometimes the warp yarn is so beautiful that I don’t want to twist it and hide its beauty or texture. This was the case with this silk satin piece I wove.

About every inch or so (or what seems needed) I work a warp thread back into the cloth. In this case the warp is so dense, the missing thread didn’t leave a space in the fringe. When it does show I practice a bit to decide what the intervals should be between the missing threads.

I didn’t want a hem at the cut end so I removed a couple of wefts and then used the same treatment. Since the warp threads were so short, I used a hook like a knitting machine needle. This one came from the notions department. (I bet Amazon has such thing, too). I grasped the thread with the hook open.

Then I wove the closed hook into a few wefts of the cloth and grasped the thread and the hook closed as I pulled it through.

How it looks on the right side.

Here is the finished piece—it’s not long 27inches. I’m thinking of mounting something on it, using it as a background.

Here are the tools I had on hand. The needle pillow I wove and its supply of tapestry needles was a big help. Sometimes I combed the fringes with the bigger ones.

I dyed the silk warp and weft yarns and cut up wool cloth into tiny pieces for the inside. Animal fiber inside won’t rust pins and needles I learned long ago in 4H. The hook with the jaw open is nearby. The seam ripper was used in another project.

5 thoughts on “A Way to Deal With Fringe Other than the Usual Treatments”

  1. Moth hole tip, excellent. Passed on to my sister who only wears cashmere sweaters.

    Would some gentle needle felting discretely hold the last weft thread in place too, on feltable fibres?

    Reply
  2. What a great idea to use the little hook thing, that would work any time you had a tail to bury. I probably have one around here somewhere, if a gadget has been invented I’ve got it!
    Another thing to fill pincushions is hair. Both of my sons had long hair back in the 80s when that was the style. When they decided to shorten it some I saved the hair!

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