Sketching a Simple Layout on Paper First
Okay. Last time we talked about why most patterns are more trouble than what they make. So now the question is, if you're not following a pattern, what are you following. Answer's a sketch. Not a fancy one. Just something on paper so you're not standing at the dowel improvising the whole thing with cord in your hand and no idea where it ends.
I'm not talking about a drawing that looks like anything. I can't draw. Mine look like a kid's homework. That's fine. The sketch isn't the art, it's the plan.
What you actually need
Grab a piece of paper, even scratch paper, and draw a horizontal line for your dowel. Under it, draw vertical lines, spaced out, for your cord groups. You don't need to draw every single cord. If you're mounting twenty cords in pairs, just draw ten lines and know each one means two.
Then block out sections. I mean literally draw boxes. Top third, middle third, bottom third, or however you want to split it. In each box, write the knot you're planning. Square knot rows. Diagonal DHH. A spiral section. Whatever you've got in your hands from the sampler.
That's it. That's the whole sketch. Three boxes and some words in them.
Why bother
Because without it you get partway down and you don't know if you're supposed to be tapering in, switching knots, or just filling space till the bottom. I've watched people freeze at the halfway point of a hanging because they never decided what happens there. The knot tying isn't hard once your hands know it. The deciding is the hard part, and that's easier done sitting at a table with a pencil than standing at the dowel mid-project.
So here's where I always tell people to slow down: figure out your finished length first, before you draw the boxes. Measure the wall space it's going on, or just decide, eighteen inches, two feet, whatever. Then split that length across your sections. If you don't do this step you'll get to your last section and realize you've got four inches left to fill six inches of plan, and now you're improvising anyway, which is exactly what the sketch was supposed to save you from.
Keep it loose
I'll say the same thing I said about patterns. You don't need this to be precise. You need it to be a decision you made ahead of time so you're not making six decisions at once while your hands are full of cord. If halfway through you decide the sketch was wrong, that's allowed. Cross it out, draw a new box. The paper's cheap. That's the whole point of using paper instead of just committing straight to cord.
This is Deborah's territory more than mine, but I'll say what she'd say. Sketch where the accent color goes before you start, if you're using one. Not the whole color plan, just mark which section gets it. Otherwise you get to the end and the accent's crammed into one corner because that's just where it happened to land.
I made a hanging a while back for a neighbor kid heading off to a college apartment, needed something for a bare wall, dorm-room bare. I didn't sketch it out much, just kind of built it as I went, three sections, nothing fancy. Six weeks later I asked how the dorm was treating him and he looked surprised I even remembered he'd left. I remembered. I remember most of them, actually, where they went. That one's still up in that apartment as far as I know. The sketch on that one was maybe four lines on a receipt. Didn't need to be more than that. It just needed to exist so I wasn't guessing at the halfway mark.
A caution, mild one
If you're sketching a length and a wall space at the same time, measure the actual wall, not what you remember the wall being. People eyeball it and end up with something a foot too long for the spot they had in mind. Costs you nothing to grab a tape measure before you start tying.
Before next time
Sketch your layout for the piece you're about to start, three sections is plenty, and bring it with you. Doesn't need to be neat. Mine never are.