Today Division 3 learned a bit about the history of the Métis sash, or ceinture fléchée. We tried our hand (or rather our fingers) at a textile technique called “finger weaving,” used by Indigenous peoples all over North America.
There are different styles of finger weaving, and some can be very complex, so we started simply with using five loops (check out the instruction video here).
Students worked in pairs to help each other learn the process. One student held the yarn while the other did the weaving. Weaving was like learning some new dance steps, but once we understood the pattern we were flying!
We only started with two colours, and some people tried three or four colours for their second try, but I wonder how it will look with five different colours? More experimentation to come! We will also try some other methods of finger weaving.
They look amazing! We all used the same yarn–can you think of why some weaving might be wider than others?
Our class wreath for Remembrance Day is based on Wassily Kandinsky’s work Squares with Coloured Circles (Farbstudie – Quadrate und konzentrische Ringe), 1913. Even though this piece could be considered Kandinsky’s most famous creation, it was not originally intended to be an entire composition. It was a study of how colours interacted with each other in various combinations. Kandinksy was a synesthete–he could hear colours, and see sounds. Colour tells its own story to each person, and to Kandinsky, colour meant more than just a visual component of a picture.