Flax Weaving
Where can I get online information about flax-weaving? I have searched and searched and only found endless school reports about children who did flax weaving and about courses that one can do to learn it - but there are no courses at this time of the year around here, and I just want to try it out at home with my flax that I have, not go to a course right now. I have wanted to do a course in the past, but never quite enough to get around to paying for it. However, at this particular time, my meeting with a flax weaver in the weekend and seeing some awesome stuff has coincided with my current desire to keep vegetables in some different way because they go off within days if kept in a plastic bag. So - make flax containers and put them in there. Perfect. Even badly made ones would be alright because the holes would allow air-flow.
I found one site that gave useful information on how to cut and prepare the flax, but I knew most of that anyway from my chat with the guy making kete and so on at the craft fair at the rail-way station in the weekend. Apparently it takes him 5-6 hours to make a basket. That sounds reasonable after about 6 months or so learning, especially since these were good bags, not crap.
Tomorrow I will post the little picture of the little basket I made. It is very bad, but not as bad as I thought considering it is a first attempt experiment. It is about big enough to fit business cards, if business cards were a less regular shape. What I basically want to know most at this stage is - how does one start and end a flax piece so it doesn't come loose and come undone? And how do you hold everything together when you start off? The actual weaving is just weaving, I can handle that for now, I need starting and finishing techniques. I might look for a book today, because there are apparently a lot of books about it, but no descriptions or diagrams on the net!! If anyone knows of something, leave a comment.
I found one site that gave useful information on how to cut and prepare the flax, but I knew most of that anyway from my chat with the guy making kete and so on at the craft fair at the rail-way station in the weekend. Apparently it takes him 5-6 hours to make a basket. That sounds reasonable after about 6 months or so learning, especially since these were good bags, not crap.
Tomorrow I will post the little picture of the little basket I made. It is very bad, but not as bad as I thought considering it is a first attempt experiment. It is about big enough to fit business cards, if business cards were a less regular shape. What I basically want to know most at this stage is - how does one start and end a flax piece so it doesn't come loose and come undone? And how do you hold everything together when you start off? The actual weaving is just weaving, I can handle that for now, I need starting and finishing techniques. I might look for a book today, because there are apparently a lot of books about it, but no descriptions or diagrams on the net!! If anyone knows of something, leave a comment.
Comments