Combing and Trimming the Fringe, Last, on the Wall
Okay. Bottom's tied off, hanging cord's on. Your project is basically done, it just doesn't look done yet, because the fringe is a mess and it's still sitting on the table.
So here's the thing I say every single time: hang it first. Do not trim a single strand while it's laying flat.
I know why people want to. It's sitting there looking ragged and your hands want to fix it right now. But cord behaves different laying down than it does hanging. Gravity pulls it, spreads it, shows you where it actually falls. Trim it flat and you'll cut a shape that looks fine on the table and wrong on the wall. Then you're stuck, because you can't glue cord back on.
Get it on the wall
Find your nail or hook, doesn't have to be permanent, you're just checking the hang. Get it up there and step back. All the way across the room if you can. That's the whole point, you trim what you'll actually see from your couch, not what you see six inches from your face.
Let it hang a few minutes before you touch it. Cotton cord has some memory in it and it'll settle a little, especially if you were tugging on it while you worked. Come back to it.
Combing
Before you trim anything, comb the fringe out. A regular hair comb from the bathroom works fine, wide-tooth if you've got one. Pet stores sell little wire combs for this too, cheap, and they last.
Comb from the top down, gentle, a little at a time. This does two things. It separates the plies in your cord so the fringe gets that soft, full look instead of looking like stiff ropes. And it shows you the true length of every strand, because tangled cord hides length. You'll be surprised how much longer some strands are once they're combed straight.
Go slow near the knots. If you yank hard right where the cord comes out of a knot you can pull the knot loose or fray it worse than you want. Comb the length, not the base.
Trimming
Now, finally, you trim. And here's where I'll say the same thing I said back when we cut your first row: cut a little, check, cut a little more. Don't take a big pass across the whole bottom in one go. Scissors don't grow cord back.
A few ways to go: - Straight across. Simplest, cleanest look, good if your hanging is more geometric. - Angled or a V. Longer in the middle or the sides, depending on your layout. Looks more natural, more movement. - Uneven on purpose. Some strands longer than others, no real pattern. Harder to pull off than it looks. Step back a lot if you try this one.
Whatever you pick, cut both sides evenly if you're doing a symmetric shape. Measure with your eye, not a ruler, cord this close together a ruler won't help you anyway. Stand back, look, come in and adjust, stand back again. It's slow. That's fine. This is the last step, there's no reason to rush it now.
Fringe crooked is not the end of the world, by the way. My first one, Deborah looked at it for a long minute and told me the fringe was crooked. It was. I left it up anyway. Still hanging in the front room today, still crooked, nobody's mentioned it since.
One thing I did that I didn't have to
I made a hanging one time for a ward Relief Society thing. Nobody asked me to. I didn't have a calling that had anything to do with it, I just heard they wanted something for the wall and I had cord in the tub, so I did it. Deborah told me flat out I didn't have to. I said it's not a burden. Then I complained about my back the whole next day and she reminded me I'd said that.
Point is, you don't need a reason or an assignment to make one of these for somebody. You just need cord and a free weekend. And the trimming step, the very last thing you do, is usually the moment it stops being your project on the table and starts being a gift you're about to hand somebody. Worth doing right, worth doing slow.
Watch your fingers near the knots when you trim close. Sharp scissors and cord this dense, it's easy to nick a knot loop you didn't mean to cut. Small snips, always.
Before next time: get it up on a wall, even a temporary nail, and just look at it for a day before you decide it's finished. You'll see things sitting there you didn't see on the table.