Do you meet in a flax weaving group that is open to new participants or visitors? If so, do add a comment on this blog post with the group’s location, contact details and perhaps any other information you think might be of interest. If there are enough groups, I’ll create a Flax weaving groups section on the new Links web page that I’ve just put up on this site. To show how I could create a link directly to a comment on a blog post, I’ve added a Flax weaving groups section to this draft Links page.

A number of weaving groups have placed orders for my book, and this has reminded me of how many weaving groups there are in New Zealand. Also, I often receive email queries about all kinds of flax-related questions — many more email queries than blog comments — from people who might be seeking information about weaving groups, or recommendations on tutors in different parts of the country, or enquiries about certain types of weaving that I might be able to supply. Sometimes I’m in a position to help and sometimes I’m not, so I thought it was time I put up a links page.

It was fun googling for links, and I came across a number of examples of flax weaving online that I hadn’t seen before, like the wall hanging by Jess Parone, pictured on the right, and the sculpture by Jan van de Klundert, pictured below. In the last few years, I’ve noticed that more and more examples of flax weaving have been going online. There is always something new.

It’s good to see the increasing interest and exposure of flax weaving, and I’ve also been surprised and pleased by the number of people from other countries who have bought my book. It seems that New Zealand flax is spreading all over the world. Also, I don’t know whether it is the same in other cities, but more and more new houses in Christchurch seem to have flax plants in their front garden.

Do add a comment below about your flax weaving group, or a query about weaving groups in a particular location, or any other comment about weaving groups that you might want to share.

A plant with the common name cutty grass — with its reputation for cutting fingers if they’re run along it — is an unlikely plant to use for weaving, especially as its short, narrow blades limit its use. However cutty grass, or pīngao, a native coastal plant, has one quality that, for weavers, surpasses its apparent shortcomings and that’s the deep golden yellow colour that it changes to once it’s dried. The beautiful little kete pictured here, woven by Kohai Grace, shows the beauty of this rich colour. This natural colour has meant that pīngao remains a favourite weaving material, providing coloured patterning in tukutuku panels, ketes, mats and wall hangings.

My interest in pīngao was sparked when one of the participants in a recent workshop brought some pīngao blades along to weave with. Karen, who bought the little Kohai Grace kete a couple of years ago, had been growing the pīngao for three or four years and it had reached the stage where the blades were long enough to use. The blades are mostly midrib with a small amount of soft leaf each side, and with one side narrower in width than the other. The blades are quite hard but soften very easily when a knife is run along them. Karen discovered very quickly that it was wise to have gloves on when softening the blades as it lived up to its name of cutty grass. She also found that she didn’t need to soften the pīngao as much as she normally would with flax and that the narrowest side of the blades tended to split off. She ended up removing this narrow side on all the blades although she may not have needed to if the softening hadn’t been quite as vigorous.

Karen wanted to use the whole length of her pīngao blades and so wove a kete that was joined at the bottom, ending up with a kete about twelve cm high. She plaited around the top, continuing the plait with the remaining lengths until they were used up and then wound this thick plait around the top of the kete. As Karen wasn’t happy with her first attempts, the pīngao strips were worked quite a lot as she undid and rewove her work and the stress on the blades, where they’ve split and shredded, can be seen in the photo here. However, the final kete has its own character and uniqueness and is attractive as a whole.

Although pīngao, a sand-binding plant, whose long trailing rhizomes help to stop erosion on sand dunes, once grew plentifully on coastal sand dunes throughout New Zealand, its growth declined rapidly as a consequence of burning and grazing by wild and domestic animals and overgrowth by marram grass. Harvesting methods have also contributed to this decline. Studies show that cutting a whole leaf cluster from the plant or wrenching the blades from the plant damages the growth. Clipping individual blades is now recommended as the most desirable harvesting method as it means only the useable blades are cut and that the plant is not damaged during the process.

As I don’t have ready access to harvesting pīngao, and it seems to be relatively easy to grow, I decided to grow some pingao plants in my garden. I bought six plants, grown from seed sourced from Kaitorete Spit, from the Department of Conservation nursery in Motukarara. George Santos, the manager of the nursery, advised that although pīngao’s natural habitat is sand, it can grow in ordinary soil, the vital component being a well-drained situation. I’ll plant mine in a well-drained spot in my garden but they can also be grown in pots in a mixture of sand and potting mix, as Karen grows hers. Landcare has information on their website about growing pingao and there is good information in the book Pingao: The Golden Sand Sedge mentioned on the Reviews page of my website. So there’s no need to have a sand dune in your back garden to grow this valuable weaving resource!

The book I’ve been writing, Weaving Flowers from New Zealand Flax, is now ready for sale. It contains detailed instructions for weaving fifteen different flower and foliage designs as well as different variations of several of the designs. The book also includes examples of flower arrangements for the designs, and additional flax foliage ideas for flower arrangements. Most of the flower designs can be woven from a single flax leaf, and are very quick to weave once you’ve had a bit of practice — many of them are much quicker to weave than the flower design shown in the instructions on my Weaving Flax Page.

Flowers woven from flax have become very popular over the last couple of years or so. Bunches of woven flax flowers are now offered for sale on TradeMe, and on the websites of Sema Morris and Tahi, and many school teachers are beginning to show their students how to weave flax flowers. I know from my own flax weaving workshops that people of all ages are keen to learn how to weave flowers — as wedding bouquets, gifts or decorations in their own home.

Woven flowers also make great projects for a beginner in flax weaving, and one of the advantages of flax flowers is that any variety of New Zealand flax can be used to weave them, including the coloured, variegated flaxes that are often grown as decorative garden plants throughout the world. Most of the instructions in the book are illustrated with the coloured flaxes, and show how nice they look as woven flowers. Of course, New Zealand flax is not essential for weaving flowers. As I mention on my History page, Māori traditionally used many different plants for weaving. Really, any plant with reasonably long, strong leaves can be used for weaving flowers.

Although most of the designs in the book are made from a single flax leaf, a few designs or variations are rather more elaborate, and one or two — like the sunflower shown on the right — require many leaves. Other photos from the book are shown in my Book page, which I’ve just added to advertise the book, including instructions on how to purchase it.

At the same time that I’m putting up this blog post, I’m also emailing all the people who have asked to be notified when the book came out, including some people who bought an earlier booklet that I put together rather quickly in 2007 when I was invited to tutor flower weaving to the conference delegates of the OSCAR after-school programme. (Up till now, I’ve called the current book a booklet, but as it is now over a hundred pages in length and has its own ISBN number, I think I can fairly describe it as a book!)

Incidentally, the price of the book is considerably higher than the earlier booklet. This reflects the increase in size, from a 16-page booklet of 5 flower designs with small photographs to a 115-page book of 12 flower designs and 3 foliage designs with much larger photographs and more detailed instructions, as well as flower arrangements and additional flax foliage ideas.

I imagine those who purchased the earlier booklet will find the book greatly improved. As well as the increase in size and detail, the quality of the photographs, instructions and layout is also much improved. However, I’ve no doubt that the book can be improved still further. If you buy the book, do post a comment below if you can see how it might be improved, or post a question if any of the instructions are not entirely clear. If you’re considering buying the book, and there’s anything you’d like to know about it, please don’t hesitate to ask. Also, if you have a digital photo of a flower or flowers you have made — or a photo of another version of a woven flower that you’d like to share — you can use a free photo-sharing website such as www.flickr.com, and put a link to the photo in my comment box.