Cutting the Rest of Your Cord to Match Your First Row
Okay. You've got your layout sketched, colors picked, and by now you should know which knots you're using where. Time to actually cut cord.
I know what you want to do. You want to cut all your strands right now, all of them, lay them out nice, and feel like you've made real progress before you've tied a single knot. Everybody wants to do this. I get it, it feels productive.
Don't.
So here's where I always mess up, or used to. I cut a whole project's worth of cord in one go, measured once, felt very efficient about it, and started tying. Got about halfway through the first row and realized my strands were coming up short. Not a little short. About eight inches short, every strand, because I'd measured wrong on the very first cut and then just repeated that same wrong number sixty more times. Had to scrap the lot and start over. That's cord you paid for sitting in the garbage.
Now I do it different. Cut one strand. Mount it, tie your whole first row with it, whatever that row is for your piece, square knots, half hitches, whatever you planned. Get all the way through that first row and look at what's left hanging off the bottom. That's your real answer. Not a guess, not a formula, the actual leftover length sitting in front of you.
Then cut the rest to match that.
How to actually do this
- Cut one strand generous. If your finished fringe is supposed to be 8 inches, and your knotted section is going to eat up cord fast (square knots eat a lot, more than people expect), just cut long. You can always trim. You can't add back.
- Mount it on your dowel and tie your first full row. Whatever knot pattern starts your piece, work it all the way across with that one test strand, or with as many strands as you need to complete one full pass of the pattern. Don't stop halfway. You need to see how much cord that whole first row actually costs you.
- Look at what's hanging below. That leftover length, plus a little cushion, maybe two inches, is your number. Write it down if you need to. I usually don't, but I've been doing this a while.
- Cut the rest of your cord to that length. All of it, all at once now, because you've got a real number instead of a guess.
- Leave extra on a few strands if your piece has anything uneven in it. Diagonal sections, spirals, anything that isn't a flat straight run, eats cord differently than a plain row. If part of your layout does something fancier partway down, cut those particular strands a couple inches long just in case. Trim later. That's always easier than running short.
One opinion here I'll repeat because it matters: don't precut everything before you've proven your row. I don't care how good your math is. Cord doesn't behave the way math says it should, because the tension in your hands isn't the same every time, and a dowel from the hardware store isn't a lab. Tie the row first. Then cut.
While you're cutting
Use sharp scissors. Fraying cotton cord with dull scissors is its own kind of headache, you get these little fuzzy ends that won't feed through a knot clean. If your scissors are the ones that came free with something else, go get real fabric scissors. It's a small cost and it saves you swearing at a strand for five minutes.
And step back once you've got your full row cut and mounted. Really look at it before you go further. I've told this story in class before, the time I ran a whole diagonal section backward and didn't notice for two solid hours of knotting, only caught it when I stood up to stretch and looked at the piece from across the room instead of six inches from my face. Same thing applies here. Cut your row, tie it, then back up and actually look before you commit the rest of your cord to matching it. If something's off, this is the cheap moment to fix it. Once everything's cut to length and mounted, changing your mind costs you cord you don't get back.
Waste bothers me more than it probably should. That's exactly why I do it this way. Measure the real row, not the imagined one, and you won't be standing in your garage at ten at night recutting sixty strands because you trusted a number instead of your own hands.
Before next time
Get your first row tied and your remaining cord cut to match it, but don't go further than that. Next time we start building the body of the piece, and I want everyone starting from the same spot with cord that's actually going to reach where it needs to go.