Ask Madelyn: Fringe Without Hemstitching

Good Morning, Madelyn,

I want to know if it is possible to make a twisted fringe on a scarf without hemstitching first. While I like hemstitching, I think that having just the fringe without the hemstitching would give it a “cleaner” look.

—Kathy Gholston

Hi Kathy!

I agree with you and I usually do my fringe without hemstitching. You need to leave a few picks of weft (or scrap yarn) in both raw edges that you don’t ravel out until you are twisting the fringe (and then, I only cut out a little bit at a time right at the place I’m twisting), so the edge weft threads are kept firm while you are doing the twisting. Do you see what I mean?

Then, you want to be sure not to include too many ends in each fringe, or the weft will creep a bit and look messy. A technique that some weavers use to avoid that creep is to twist and outside warp thread in one fringe with the adjacent fringe and vice versa (crossing them over from fringe to fringe). This helps to lock in the weft yarns at the edges of each fringe.

—Madelyn