Siapo Design

Hello Bloggers, Todays Weekly Wednesday Task Is To Make Siapo Designs. One of the oldest and most important traditions of Samoa is the Siapo or Tapa.  It is a type of cloth made from the bark of the mulberry tree.  It is very time consuming, because the bark must be harvested, stripped, separated, scraped, and beaten before it can be used.  It is then laid out in the sun to dry.The artist uses natural dyes, created from items such as berries, bark, and nuts to make patterns on the cloth.  There are 13 traditional patterns used on siapo that represent things common to Samoan culture such as nets, coconut leaves, shells and flowers. Our Task was to Sketch four different inspired Siapo Designs and choose are favourite one. Next we had to Sketch our Designs onto a piece a paper fold it and then draw our designs on each of our for squares to show a sequence. For my Design I used Earth Colours, which are dark greens, yellow, Brown, Red. I created a Flower Design that has leaves on the outside crease of the Flower. Then we got to colour it with die and then scrunch it up and display it on our walls so that it gives a Tapa Cloth effect. Have you created a Siapo Design Before, was it inspired or Self Created?