Fineweave Placemats - The Making of
Our placemats are made by over 250 Hadithi artisans, that are traditional Taita basket weavers. They live in and around the Taita Hills. Watch the making of video at the bottom of this page.
The Taita hills are a green lush area, with maize and even rice growing on its flanks, as it receives more rainfall thanks to its high altitude. A breath of fresh air in a semi-desert.
The weavers here grow and process their own sisal. All of them belong to a women's group in their village. They meet weekly and weave together. They also support each other with loans and valuable advice on all kinds of practical and emotional matters.
The traditional collection is organic and 100% locally produced (hand-woven out of home-grown and naturally dyed sisal fibre).
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Traditional preparation of the sisal
Thanks to higher rainfall and fewer elephants in Taita hills compared to the more dry areas where the practical basket weavers live, basket weavers in the Taita hills grow their own sisal at their homesteads and farms. For the bright coloured sisal the weavers use sisal dyed in Hadithi Dye Centre. For natural colours, they often use their own sisal fibre.
The weaver first harvests the inner leaves of sisal from her sisal plants. Doing that, she must be careful not to destroy the plant by removing all its newer leaves which inhibits its new growth.
Now she strips the sisal fiber by hand. This is done by pulling it between two sticks until the green juicy parts are all stripped off and only the white fibre remains. Then, it's laid out to dry.
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In our natural collection, only colours are used that are produced by natural dyeing - using earth, tree bark and leaves or by burying the fibre underground next to certain plant roots.
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The weaver will now make her sisal fibre into twine. Twining might be the most time-consuming part of the whole weaving process! The dried fibres are firmly rolled into threads, which works best on a bare thigh (ouch!). A consistent amount of fibers has to be selected each time, to keep the same thickness overall.
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