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Piupiu - the traditional skirt like garment worn by Maori (these days mainly at cultural performances).
These are made of 100% New Zealand Flax or Harakeke, no plastic or wool as you can see them sometimes in cheap souvenir shops! Most of these take about 5-6 weeks to complete (larger orders obviously longer - we will advise you beforehand how long) - but nevertheless they make very nice decorations to, so we came up with a more "contemporary" approach - have a look at the photos in this gallery to see what we mean.
The black parts are created by scraping off the outer membrane of the Harakeke (flax) leaf with a mussel shell in pre-cut sequences and after completely drying these strips (that is when they curl up and bleach) - dye these in black chemical or natural dye. The taniko waistband (rarely done these days though) in some of the photo's is created almost the same way - the fibre is also 100% flax - exposed with a mussel shell and then dyed with natural or artificial dyes - however most weavers nowadays will use wool or other processed fibres for ease of access and due to lack of time.
Please give us a call or send us an e-mail for a free quote. As mentioned they do take about 6-8 weeks to complete and the price range is approx. $9 - $12 per inch for a child's one and approx. $10-$14 per inch for an adult one (oh the inch measurement is the waist and this price is excluding a taniko waist band).We can provide group quotes (please advise the sizes/numbers when you request one) but can't accommodate any large (more than 10) orders at this stage (lack of enough recource and time). Special Terms and Condtions apply for any piupiu order.
Please note: Piupiu do take a long time to create and are not done with the help of any machines, please appreciate the mahi (work) and aroha (love) that goes into these.
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