Creating "Mass and Line” with Autumn leaves

My Belgium based ikebana teacher Ilse Beunen has many online classes that are easily adaptable for teaching ikebana to children. Ilse’s online tutorials on creating leaf garlands are a favourite in our house during Autumn.

My daughters love collecting beautiful coloured leaves in the large parks in Madrid. The often wet and cooler Autumn days are also perfect for spending time indoors threading the leaves together to form garlands. When bunched together, the garlands are the perfect material to use in the Sogetsu Curriculum lesson on Mass and Line (two of the three Principles of Sogetsu Ikebana).

Using direct fixing (Jika-dome) to place a branch of tortured willow in a vase.

My daughters placed a stem of tortured willow in their chosen vases. Due to the width of the vases, they used a direct fixing technique (Jika-dome).

Attaching a leaf garland to the branch.

Once they were happy with the direction of their branch, they used wire to attach the leaf garlands to their branches.

Flowers are always cut in water.

To complement the colours of the vase, and to add a pop of colour to the leaves, they used orange and yellow gerberas.

The flowers are placed in floral tubes and inserted into the leaves..

Finally, to keep a distinct and clean line at the base of the arrangement, they used floral tubes for their flowers and inserted these into the mass of leaves.

Final arrangement by Amelia.

Final arrangement by Isabel.

They were delighted with the outcome of their individual arrangements and were even happier at the result when they were placed together.