Techniques used to fasten down the edges are hemming and whipping. The workmanship is fairly coarse, the lengths of the individual stitches approximately a quarter-inch long. Standards were much below those held by the weaver, but this difference is not surprising.
Threads employed for the patching suggest that the seamstress used odds and ends of weaving yarns. Two or more kinds ordinarily appear on a single patch, one of them usually a coarse white cotton thread of fairly loose twist. Some threads are used single in the needle, some double. Colors are browns, blues, orange, yellow, the last happening to be short lengths of wool. There is no evidence that the seamstress attempted to match the yarn to either the ground or the patch materials. Where we start a new length of thread with a knot made at the end, these Chincha threads begin with a half-hitch around the first stitch taken through the cloth (16-1238) or with a stitch through the cloth and a knot tied with the short and long sections of the thread (16-1261).
Plate 3,d shows one of the typical patched cloths. Four fabrics are represented: the base material, medium fine; and the three patching fabrics, the lower patch very fine and the upper right and left patches coarse. The most complicated arrangement of patches is found on a specimen (16-1240) composed of two breadths seamed together. The overall measurements of the torn rectangular fragment are 17 inches warpwise by 30 inches weftwise. Within this area are nine different pieces of cloth, seven of them covering worn spots or poorly woven areas.
The only colored decoration on the Chincha domestic cloths is in the form of stripes. This section presents an analysis of the types found on thirty-odd specimens.
Stripes in this sample group either border the edge of the cloth or make an allover pattern. With the exception of four cloths, the stripes are warpwise of the materials; these four have stripes both warpwise and weftwise, and thus may be classified as plaids. Edge stripes occur in combination with an allover strip pattern in specimen 16-1287 and in combination with plaid in specimen 4-3973d (pl. 6,f). There are no cloths crossbanded only with colored wefts.