Woven Experiment No.70 - Wax corn dollie

Woven Experiment No.70 - Wax corn dollie

I recently received a lovely gift from the UK Straw Weavers Organisation of a sheaf of wheat, this prompted me to create a corn dollie with a difference, a 40cm long wax corn dollie.

To create the 40cm length took 5 lengths of 3mm wax around 300cm per length, I began with a small neck and began to weave. The lengths I was working was so long I needed to stand upon a chair to allow them to move freely and not become tangled. As I got to the half way mark it dawned on me that if any of the strands snapped it would be very difficult to splice in a new piece of wax, so I continued more slowly and took more care.

The result is a corn dollie that does have a slight taper along its length but is not too noticable, I was disappointed that over 300 cm only creates such a small length of corn dollie. 

Maybe this could be wrapped around a plaster core for casting, maybe a shape like Plaster Carving Experiment No.8 ?

This wax experiment is using a polystyrene ball as a former. A corn dollie weave has been used to create a half sphere.

Lengths of 3mm wax woven using a corn dollie weave

These are some new experiments with red wax using corn dollie weaving, using varying amounts of weavers creates some very different shapes.

Step 6 . Finishing off

To finish off the weave tuck the paper tube under a previous straw instead of weaving on the top. 

You can tuck each length if required or use a drop of glue to secure the ends.

Once you have mastered working with five strands of paper using a neck, why not try weaving without the neck or increasing the number of straws using 6,7 or 9 straws.

Whilst on holiday on the Isle of Wight, I came across a second hand book store, having begun research on different styles of weaving I asked if they happened to have anything with corn dollies. I was surprised with the reply “oh yes, follow me to the corn dollie section” I followed the gentleman up three flights of stairs past endless rooms stacked floor to ceiling with books, until we arrived in a room where he pointed to a labelled shelf, “here is the weaving section”. I could have stayed there all day, he had amassed every possible type of book featuring many weaves that I had never come across. I found this delightful book by the Womens Institute