Al Sadu is woven flat on the ground, by women, in strips no wider than an arm's reach and up to seven metres long, then sewn edge to edge into tent cloth and dividers. The ground is spun goat hair — warm, dusty black, never ink.

Everything is banded. Narrow rows of stepped ornament alternate with plain ground, and one wider central band, the shajarah, stacks the richest motifs. The loom cannot make a curve, so nothing here curves. Colour comes from madder, onion skin, indigo, and the undyed fleece of sheep, goat and camel.