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Here is the gourd at hand. :) This lesson, should it prove useful and understandable will show you how to weave a rim like the one pictured below. Your mission if you choose to except it is to learn it, do it, and show off to EVERYONE and ANYONE especially those on the patch that you have learned Chamorro art of Gourd rim Weaving :) hehehehehehehahhaha. :)
Necessary stuff :
Piercing tool
Gourd of course!
This tutorial
Flat type of plaiting material, ribbon, pandanus leaves, I heard cat tails work, and Haida indians from Alaska used Cedar Bark for a flat plaiting material.
Time
Patience
And good hands.
Now I use pandanus leaves for this, and here is a pic of them :
Here is my started pandanus leaves. :) IT HAS BEGUN!
Now in a nut shell all this weaving is, is ONE! continuous strip (well if you don't have one strip that is long enough, you would have to splice another strip of the same size into the weave) that goes in a spiral like this :
and along the way is woven on the outside of the gourd with some horizontal strips. :) But here, if you got it already, then try it out, if not venture forward!
This is what it would look like if it was just a cross section of the gourd. Now notice, that the bottom at A, B, C, D all are tapered off. These are all entering a hole in the gourd. Now look at A. A is entering the pierced hole in the gourd, and is ending up on top. Now is it slanted forward a bit, so that it will be aligned with the second column. Now it is woven. Under, over under over, and into the hole and becomes B. Now B is threaded through the hole, and pulled out the opening of the gourd. And is woven, over, under over under and then threaded into the hole, becoming C. Now C is pulled out the gourd, and woven. Under, over, under, over, and threaded through the hole, becoming D. Now D is pulled out of through the opening of the gourd, and is now just hanging around to become something. :)
Now this is the inside view of the gourd. :) Now notice, that when A goes through the hole, it slants over. That is how you get the effect of MANY wefts and MANY warps. :) I meant, alot of vertical strips, and a lot of horizontal strips. :) That is what I meant by ONE continuous vertical strip. :)
You are NOW nearing the end. :)
What will you do. :) hehehehe. All you have to do is complete ALL the way up to the beginning and then merge the two together.
When you butt the two up against each other you will either get
A, or you will get B. :) There is NO in between. :) A is more favorable, but you can work B also. :) A provides for an easy and very undetectable transition, while B leaves us with a little length to mess with, so you with the trained eye (and probably most any one that knows anything about flat plaiting) would see it. :) there would be a double weave of over, and a double weave of the under.
So that would leave room for detection of the starts and finishes. :) But isn't the whole purpose to amaze and induce wonderment to people, amateurs and professionals alike? That would truly be accomplishment. To stump the chumps in your own class! :)
Now, if you have suggestions, PLEASE EMAIL ME with them! I want to fix this so that EVERYONE can understand. Don't get a certain part? Highlight it, copy it, and paste it into an email message, and for the subject put Tutorial One, and the first few lines, tell me what you got from it, and then ask me to elaborate on it! This is my FIRST tutorial on weaving.
Email Bayogu Boy, the Guamanian Gourdologist/Gourdisian : James Bamba
If you have COMMENTS! Please send those also. :)
If you have complaints! I really don't want to hear them, but email me them anyway, some probably have good reason behind them.
If you are going to flame me about anything BRING IT ON! :) I love email!
This tutorial is dedicated to ALL the great people on the GourdPatch, who suggested that I do this and do it well (well, maybe I didn't do it well, but who knows) So here it is, Gaigue ha' guini!...
