Back from the place I come from, we use a lot of eco friendly elements for festives like banana leaves, coconut straws, coconut stems, mango leaves, lots and lots of marigold flowers. India being the land of farms, we get loads of fresh flowers for events. During festive, we used to visit the flower matrket in the morning and get marigold flower garlands in bulk to decorate our homes. I really miss the grandeur festive celebrations we do in our country. So this is a DIY that I have attempted to get the feel of the traditional elements from India.
May it be just a festival, or a house warming, or may be a bridal shower or even a wedding. You can make your event truly traditional with this DIY pandiri.
check out the supplies before you start:
The below picture shows how you get the reed bundles. I got them from amazon for 11$ each.
Soak the reed in warm water for about half hour before you start cutting and weaving.
Measure how long you want the mat to be and cut the reed strings in desired lengths. The one ordered from amazon does not come as a single piece. It is precut in different lengths like 4feet, 6, 8 11 and so on. To make the best use of the reed and minimize wastage you can go by multiples of 6 and build a 6 by 6 (may not be exact but close to)mat.
Once you are done cutting the pieces, arrange just 4 reed pieces vertically and just take one reed horizontal and weave going up and down alternate.
The second weave should go alternate as shown in fig 2 below under section C.
Once you are done with weaving 4 reeds, now add more vertical and horizontal. You can also add all vertical for 6 feet and weave the horizontal, but we figured adding them by bits was easier.
My husband had made some creative interlock hangings with waste left over pieces and i have added some bells and some flowers to stick them from ceiling.
