Before and After

 

The photo shows the cloth, one piece is prior to wet finishing, (background) and the other after wet finishing (foreground).

It shows more in real life than in the photo but it does show a few things that if you squint you may see.

The blue colour has intensified.  During wet finishing, the threads slip/slide to areas of least resistance and the threads tend to tighten up.  The hard press then compresses the threads so that they indent into each other, increasing stability.  The overall look is that of the design having more definition and the colour to 'deepen'.  This cloth has slightly more white on the 'wrong' side and more blue on the 'right' side, and generally I choose the warp emphasis side to be the be 'right' side, even though I've woven it with the least number of shafts rising - in this case 7 instead of 8.

What you cannot see is the change in the tactile - the additional drape, the reduction of a sense of 'coarseness' in the finished fabric.

The finished fabric is no longer a collection of individual threads but a 'whole' cloth.

At times the change that happens in wet finishing is dramatic; at times subtle.  What happens, though, is that it changes.  In my opinion, that last final step is required to create useful, practical cloth, built to fulfill a purpose.

Not everyone wants to do that, and like one 'famous' weaver insisted, they were a weaver, not a laundry, and they never wet finished anything.  Others want to create effects that can *only* be achieved through the magic in the water.  

And some just want to make cloth that will wear well, and last well.  Wet finishing is part of helping those threads function as they should be able to do, if made well.

I don't remember who wanted to see the before and after photos, but I thought it was good to discuss this important (imho) step and try to show the effects.