The flaxen-haired angel in the photo is a variation on the flax angel I posted instructions for at this time last year. This angel is a bit more fiddly and long-winded to make but I think the extra effort is worth it. I dyed her hair with yellow dye to give her golden locks but it’s not essential to do the dying if you don’t have access to yellow dye. Her halo is another addition this year and her wings have been shaped to make them more feathery. I hope you enjoy making her.

Start making the angel by shredding some flax with an animal comb or fork and tying a bundle of it with a strip of flax. Tie it with a double knot quite near the narrow ends of the shreds.

Pull some of the waste flax out of the comb you have used to shred the flax with, and roll it into a small ball.

Position the flax ball into the middle of the shredded flax just above where it has been tied. This is going to give some shape to the head. It’s quite tricky to keep this flax ball in place so you may find it’s a good idea to put some glue at several points around the circumference of the ball to hold the shredded flax in place as you continue to make the angel.

Tie another strip of flax at the top of the flax ball making sure that the flax shreds completely surround the flax ball.

At this point I dipped the long thin ends of the shreds, up to the top tie, into boiling yellow dye, as I wanted the angel to have golden curls, but this is not an essential step. I used Teri Golden Yellow dye, and, as I used a flax with quite a lot of white in the colouring, it only needed a brief dip in the dye.

Now plait the long thin ends that come out of the top of the head into long braids. Separate the fibres carefully and make sure you are using fibres that come from the same area of the head for each braid.

Shred a little bit more flax for the arms. Tie the shreds together in the middle to make a bundle and then slip this in between the shredded flax of the body. Push it up so that it’s right underneath the tie for the neck. Tie another piece of flax around the body below the arms to create a waist.

Now shred some more flax and divide it into two bundles. Drape one bundle over the right shoulder and bring it across the front of the body to the left. Drape the second bundle over the left shoulder and bring it across in front of the body to the right. Tie these in place around the waist with a wide strip of flax.

Bend the arms around to the front, tie a thin strip of flax around the flax at the right distance to make wrists for the arms and then cut off the ends of the flax, and shaping the ends into hands. Hold the hands together temporarily with a tie of flax so that as the flax dries, that arms stay in the bended shape.

Now make the wings. I’ve used a thin, soft variegated flax for the illustration here but the thinner flax tends to curl up too much as it dries so I suggest you use a thicker flax for this style of wings. Take a piece of a flax leaf and scrape a blunt knife along both sides to soften and dry it a little to prevent the wings from curling up. Fold the flax on an angle with the fold at the top and a piece of flax coming down at an angle on each side and cut these sides into wing shapes. Staple the pieces in place close to the fold. Split each wing into about five strips just a bit over halfway along the wing. Use fine scissors to round the end of each strip and then cut up the strip a bit to narrow it and to give a feathery effect.

Position the wings just at shoulder height on the angel and attach them with glue or double-sided tape or a staple. I used double-sided tape which I find holds the wings securely.

It’s now time to unplait the braids and let the angel’s hair down! Or you could leave the braids in place, for a more funky look for the angel. If you do this, I suggest you plait some more braids separately and then sew them onto the angel’s head as they could be a bit sparse otherwise.

To make the angel’s halo, take a thin strip of flax, about .5 cm wide and as long as you can get it without using the tough bit of the leaf. Soften it with a knife and then fold it at right angles in the middle of the strip. It’s easiest to do this on a flat surface to start with.

Take the end of the strip that is out to the left and fold it across to the right over the first fold.

Take the end of the strip that is pointing up to the top and fold it down over the strip pointing to the left, folding it neatly against the other strip.

Continue to fold the strips over each other like this, until you have used up all the length of the strip. Make sure you fold the each strip squarely and closely up against the last strip otherwise the halo will be a bit loose, which may not be appropriate for an angel!

Hold the ends closely so that the folded strips don’t come undone and then curl the strip into a circle. Attach the ends together so that the halo is the right size for the angel’s head.

Attach the halo to the back of the angel’s head with glue or double-sided tape. Trim the long hair and arrange it so that it sits prettily around the angel’s shoulders and your angel is completed.

I recently received a letter from Kathy of Takaka who writes “We had an excellent hui with the local primary school (40 kids) who loved making your angel. They all went home clutching their one, along with a poi and kowhaiwhai pattern they had coloured in. A happy and successful first visit to our marae for a lot of them.” It’s lovely to hear that people have enjoyed making the original angel and I hope you enjoy making this version. Do send me a photo if you have your own variations.

© Alison Marion Brown 2009.

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.

© Alison Marion Brown 2009.

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!

© Alison Marion Brown 2009.