Palm Leaf Craft - Vellore
The palm leaves are utilized in making variety of products such as presentation boxes, plain boxes, hats, trays, baskets and more. The weaving of these products is simple, and the twists and turns of the palm leaves strip to build each product changes slightly. The making process of palm leaf basket is going to be described further in simple three steps accordingly: Preparation of Palm leaves, Dyeing of Palm leaves & Weaving of Palm leaves to baskets.
1. The Preparation of Palm Leaves:
The palm leaves are collected from the palm trees. The semi dry palm leaves are completely dried. The midrib of the dried leaves is removed splitting the palm leaves into two halves separating the stick. Later the palm leaves are either cut to more thin strips or kept to carry on with the further dyeing process.
2. Dyeing of Palm Leaves:
The dried palm leaves are cut to more thin strips and dyed to give respective color. A vat half filled with water is kept for boiling. With slight start of boiling the dye is added once the color of the water turns to respective color the palm strips are added to the vat and left for the dye to settle on the strips. After few minutes the strips are removed and kept for cooling. The dyed strips are taken and further weaving process is begun.
3. Weaving of Palm Leaves to Baskets:
The palm leaves are weaved to variety of things- boxes, presentation boxes, simple square boxes, baskets, hats and many more. The making process of palm leaf basket follows by firstly picking up a pair of palm leaves of length 12inches. The palm leaves is weaved to create a tray like shape for the base of the basket. To start with the weaving two pairs of palm leaves of an inch’s width is taken and placed adjacent to each other with half-centimeter’s gap. A thin cut strip is taken and placed behind. Keeping the two pair of adjacent palm leaves in the same position the thin strip is brought over front till the half-centimeter’s gap and inserted, it is run across horizontally and brought front, kind of knotting the strip. The step follows to finish with the base for the basket maintaining the distance of strips equally repeating the steps while adding pair of palm leaves adjacent to one another. The edges are locked following the same weaving steps but with the thin strips of half centimeters width. Then the sides are worked by continuing the weaving in the same way. The handles for the basket are attached by measuring from the sides, marking equal spots from both sides. The extra palm leaves are cut with the help of small handy knife and the basket is completed.
Flow Chart of Making Process:
