Bag

A flat rectangular bag (kete muka) made from New Zealand Flax fibre, with running threads in yellow, pink and purple. There is a wide fringe around three sides on the back and front, and two twisted fibre handles. This bag was made by finger-weaving or twining and the main technique is single-pair twining, which forms the wefts (aho). This began at the top edge with a selvedge, and finished at the bottom where the warp threads (whenu) were left loose, and are covered by the fringes. There are six warps per cm, and the wefts are 10 mm apart. The fringe threads are joined by a line of single-pair twining and sewn onto the bottom and side edges. There is one fringe on the back of the bag and one on the front. Warps every four or five threads apart on the top row loop around each other to form a cross-diagonal pattern. Alternate rows on the lower part of the bag have the sixth or seventh warps crossing over to loop together. Two of the wefts are pink threads, and there are running threads in yellow, pink and purple on some wefts. This pattern is repeated on the back of the bag.