Woven Palm Creations

A little bit belated Easter, a little bit belated Mother's Day, this post is for my mom.  I gave a bunch of palm weavings to her and she's been passing them on to her friends and they've been asking questions about how they were created.  Hopefully I'll answer those questions.

If you've been following along the last few years you'll know that once a year I take a break from creepy crafts to do some palm weaving.  If you are here for the palm weaving, you might not want to stray too far. This blog is filled with things and some of those things have sharp teeth and tentacles.  You have been warned.

This year I played around with all the things I've learned how to make so far. I'm not really sure what the Catholic Church's stance is on hot glue, but that's what I used for the most part to put things together.

The weaving above consists of a rustic plait base (all that's visible of it are the two ends sticking out the top), also at the top are two rustic plaits with loops, following down are some roses, star flowers with rose centers, a couple of braids and a decorative sprig (see note at the end of star flower tutorial). 

I made a lot of small roses this year with this technique, using strips of palm that were about 0.5 inch/ 1 cm in width.  Depending on the length of the palm and size of rose, I could make 1-3 roses out of one strip.  If I ended the rose mid-palm, I would cut the palm and wrap the end around the "stem".  Holding it tightly I would fold a piece of painters tape over it.  If the rose used up the strip all the way to the end I would wrap and then tuck the end.  If there was enough leftover I'd make little loops and finish up again by folding tape over the top and bottom.

The reason for all the tape is to keep the rose intact as it dries.  The palm shrinks as it dries so if you just secure the ends the rose coils will lose tension, not that it's a bad look.  If you want the coils to stay tighter and remain flatter though it needs to dry that way.  Both flowers on the left started out relatively the same.  The one on the far left was just secured at the stem and the other was secured flat with tape.

For these I used the roses and bundled scrap pieces to decorate crown of thorns. 

Slight variation, with ribbon.

The crosses were made using this technique. If that video goes a bit too fast, this shows the same basic cross, without the added loops on the cross bars.  The ones on the ends have this type of braid and the center one uses this rustic plait which I've added loops into the weave.  Each cross contains two separate braids, the joins are hidden by the roses.  

For these I hit my stash of dried leaves and flowers.  

The pressed wine & roses weigela flowers are layered 

with a small cross on top and a larger one underneath. 

More crosses, wispy strands bundled and pressed dry, with small roses.

A few more crosses, a bit simpler.  The one on the left is two crosses layered. 

Still more crosses, playing with different styles.  

This last one is just a small rogue bouquet, with a 

bundle of wisps, a couple of braids and a single rose.  

Whether you are one of the curious that actually received one of these or you just stumbled in off the internet I hope this was at least somewhat useful in your future palm weaving endeavors.