Wipe Your Feet, Dear

My miniatures group is doing nautical-themed projects at the moment, so I made an ocean plait mat to take for my contribution to the meeting's-end raffle this month.  I experimented with one of these some time ago using kitchen twine, but that doesn't have much body, of course, and it looks like kitchen twine.  I found another brand of string at Hobby Lobby -- simply called "Natural Cord" -- that although as it turns out doesn't have much body either, it does look more like rope, with more clearly-defined strands and twist.

I used Knotter's tutorial, with a helpful video, as well as the accompanying diagram in a different post, which I printed out at roughly the size of the mat I wanted (3 in./7-8 cm) for 1:12 scale.  For me at least, it was helpful to actually pin the string onto the illustration with a slab of cork underneath -- this makes it look more like bobbin lace than a sailor's knot, but I am no sailor, so needs must.  Before long, I also threaded the working end onto a yarn needle, which made it much easier for me to pass the ends in and out.

The process is about fifteen minutes of complete incomprehension and annoyance and recalcitrant loops ("under, over -- no! over, under -- wait, what's that, oh, that goes there"), then when you look down and suddenly it all makes sense there is about five minutes of smooth sailing as you just run the working end happily alongside what is already there, and then two or three hours of snugging it up and primping and trying to get it to lie flat and/or straight.  Just when you think you've got it snug, you realize that two of the strands are crossed and you have to winkle them flat and follow one strand along for ages until it all comes right.

You are supposed to side-splice the rope ends, apparently, but when I looked at a video for that, I just started laughing, in a slightly hysterical manner, and wrapped the two ends to their immediate neighbors with a needle and thread and trimmed them close, with a big dab of Fray Check.  The finished mat was surprisingly stable even with the string in its natural state, but I starched it a bit (1 part starch to 6 parts water, the "lightly starched" formula on the bottle, but it could have used more).  Actually, I dabbed at it first with a used tea-bag, as there happened to be one handy (!), but I thought it was too much -- luckily, dipping it into the starchy water softened this.  The water also had the extra benefit -- I think it started with the tea-bag, actually -- of causing the cotton string to shrink, so it tightened up beautifully.

Comments

[Dawn in NL]

Wow, it looks great. The winner will be happy with that.

[Toffeeapple]

My word, your talents know no bounds! That truly looks like a full size mat, well done.