woven abaca straps cut down to 3” x 2” (very approximately in some cases) and ready to be sent for Swatch books
2” x 3” nets for the swatch swap book.
This year it is being produced by Yama Ploskonka of Papel Texano in Austin Texas. To make them, we put a bunch of holes in a piece of pink insulation foam and set it in a vise.
Barbara weaving abaca straps through insulation foam board which produces a net on each side
We wove strips of abaca through and across the board.
When we worked on either side, it felt like a fibrous version of the old game, Battleship. The result was 2 webs of abaca (one from each side) which we cut into these roughly 2” x 3” shapes. We waxed them with beeswax and poppy oil to bring up the black and brighten the green and blue.
the abaca straps were cut with rotary scissors to different widths for the weaving
a pair of nets of abaca straps after they dried and each side was cut off the pink foam board
We had to make 6 of these 2x webs to get 110 swatches. We sent Yama 105.
sample of our 3” x 2” design
Later, we thought, “These might scale up pretty well. . .”
we decided to go large. . .
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