Pt England School was lucky enough to have some special visitors on Thursday 19th June. Some weavers from Te Puawai weavers came into the school to show us the process of weaving piupiu. Piupiu are a traditional Māori garment, typically a skirt-like garment made of flax or New Zealand flax, often worn for kapa haka performances and other ceremonial occasions. We were lucky enough to walk through and see different stages of a piupiu being made.
Room 6 got inspiration from these weavers and made some of their own designs. First we had to pick 3 strips of 3 different colours. Then we had to get 13 pieces of white or black paper – this would make the design. We spoke about the two different shapes we could use in our designs, they were diamonds and arrows. We glued the ends of our coloured paper on, and then we marked out the shape we would be using on the coloured strips. This would be our guideline as to which strip we would be weaving over and under. Once we marked the guidelines on, we started weaving our black or white paper. The end product of what we weaved looked great.
Thank you Te Puāwai weavers!