The piupius are ready (Photo by Mr Wallace) WE MADE OUR OWN PIUPIUS by PUPILS OF TAWERA MAORI SCHOOL Recently Mr Wallace, our Headmaster, showed us a photo of the Anaura Bay School children wearing piupius which they had made when he was their teacher. We decided that we would like to learn to make piupius too and, as we intended to hold a school concert in a few week's time, we got busy right away. Flax is not very plentiful in our district and we had to get small quantities from here and there. We soon learned that some flax was good for our purpose and some was not. Mr Wallace showed us how to cut the flax leaving the three centre leaves in each small clump. We then stripped it and brought it back to school where we placed it in a shady corner and covered it with wet sacks to keep it green. We chose a very simple pattern because this was our first attempt and because these was not much time before our concert. We marked out the pattern on a flat board and used this board as a guide for cutting the pattern on the flax. This was done by laying the strip of flax on the board and scoring through the fleshy part with a sharp knife. We had to be careful not to cut right through the flax. We then ran the back of the knife under the piece we had scored and the fleshy part of the flax came away leaving just the fibres (or whitau) in these places. As we finished each strip we hung it up to dry and then we rubbed and rubbed the fibres to make them soft. Then Mrs Wallace showed us how to taniko the strips together. We put about 150 strips on each piupiu and we did six rows of taniko on each waist. Then we plaited in the loose fibres at the back to keep them firm. Now the piupius were ready to dye. We