Starting the Top Rows and Keeping Them Square
Okay. You've got cord cut, colors picked, dowel sanded. Now you're actually starting the hanging, and this is where I lose people if I'm not careful, so let's go slow.
First thing, mounting the cord to the dowel. You're going to fold each strand in half and use a lark's head knot to hang it on the dowel. Loop over the top, pull the two ends through the fold, snug it down. Do that across your whole dowel, spacing them by eye or with a ruler if you want it exact. I go by eye now. Deborah still measures. Both work.
Here's the part everybody rushes: don't skip mounting them in order. If your layout has a color pattern, follow your sketch left to right as you go. I've watched people get three-quarters done and realize they mounted their accent color strand backward in the sequence. Then you're un-knotting a dowel, which is nobody's favorite way to spend an evening.
The top row is your foundation, so it has to be straight
Once your cords are mounted, you're going to tie a row of double half hitches straight across, using the dowel itself as your holding cord. This locks everything in place and gives you a clean line to build from.
So here's where I always mess up, or used to. You tie a double half hitch too loose on one side of the row and too tight on the other, and by the time you're ten strands in, your top edge is bowing like a smile instead of running straight. The fix is boring but it works: check your tension every few knots, not just at the end. Pull the row taut with your hand and eyeball it against the dowel. If it's dipping, snug up the loose section before you move on. Don't wait.
Pin your dowel to your board or clipboard, level if you've got one, even a cheap one from a Macey's run. It doesn't need to be fancy. It just needs to hold still, because your hands aren't the problem, gravity and a wobbly cord are.
Working the first few rows down
After your foundation row, you'll start whatever pattern you sketched. Square knots, diagonals, maybe a little spiral section if that's what you drew. Work in short sections. I tell people to do about four inches of one knot pattern, then step back, actually step back, and look at the whole thing from a few feet away. Not because you'll always catch a mistake right off, but because you'll catch it faster than if you plow through the whole first foot.
This is the same lesson from the sampler, but it matters more here because now it's not practice, it's the actual piece.
A story about not overplanning this part
Brad's wife wanted a hanging for over the crib, and I got it in my head to do something fancier than I needed to. Three different cord types, layered colors, a design that needed the top rows to line up just right across all three. Took me a week just to get the mounting and first rows square, because every time one cord type sat differently than the others, I had to redo the tension across the whole row to make it look intentional instead of accidental.
Baby came early. Hanging wasn't done. I finished it a few weeks late and it's over that crib right now. Late is still done. But if I'd kept my top rows simpler, one cord type, one clean foundation, I'd have had it done in time and saved myself a week of frustration over something nobody but me was going to notice.
That's the opinion, and I'll say it straight: you don't need a complicated top section to make something look finished. A clean, square double half hitch row across the top does more for how professional a piece looks than any fancy first-row pattern. Simple and straight beats clever and crooked every time.
A caution worth saying plainly
If you're using a dowel with any kind of finish or sharp cut ends, run your hand along it before you mount cord. Dry air out here means wood splinters more than people expect, and you don't want to be pulling cord across a rough edge for the next three hours. Sand it now, not later.
Checking your work before you move on
Before you go further than your first few rows, look at the whole top edge again. Cords evenly spaced. Line straight across. No strand pulled tighter than its neighbors. If something's off, fix it now while it's four rows deep, not forty.
Before next time, get your foundation row and at least the first section of pattern done, and don't be afraid to undo a few knots if the top edge is bowing. That'll do more for the rest of your piece than anything else we cover.