The Side bands of
Paretumu
Mats.
Providing Foundation Wefts. So far the end bands of a koviri mat have been dealt with. Here there is no problem as the pae wefts are merely a continuation of the body wefts at either end. It is obvious that to plait the side bands of a paretumu mat, the piu edge must be discarded. Wefts must be free at the sides to provide foundation wefts for the band. On the left edge, only the sinistral wefts could be free and they could only project past the left end dextral. The plaiting would thus recede diagonally from the edge, as shown in Fig. 110, where c c is the end dextral, and AB the line of the desired edge.
As the sinistrals cannot be turned back as dextrals to bring the plaiting to the side edge, AB, the only way out of the difficulty is to add new dextrals along the line AB. This is exactly what was done,
Fig. 111. From the marginal dextral, C, the two butt strips, X and Y, have been added in such a way that they supply dextral wefts to engage the sinistrals, and bring the plaiting to the vertical line of the edge AB. The butt ends are to the outside to lock the plaited edge. They are added on the left edge to supply sufficient wefts for a working combination which is carried across to the right edge of the mat. On the right, it is the dextrals that are free, so fresh sinistrals are added to form the edge in a manner similar to the above. When a fresh working strip is taken from the left, a sufficient number of fresh dextrals are added, and so the two side edges are built up as the plaiting of
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the body progresses. On the completion of the body of the mat, the butt strips are split into their component wefts and thus supply the crossing elements for the ends of the sinistrals on the left, and the dextrals on the right. The butt strips must be long enough to form the
pae band and the finishing
taviri edge.
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