From yarn to weaving, designing and sewing a blouse

The title sounds like a class offered at a national weaving convention, no it is me teaching Hope just 3 months into her 7th birthday in my studio.

 I met Hope when her dad brought her to our home  in september when he and his crew were doing construction work for us. I looked outside, saw her just hanging about,  and went and introduced myself . I asked if she was going to be back the next day and she said her mom had just had a baby a few days before so yes she would. I  then asked if she would like to try to learn to weave and she smiled and that was the beginning of of this journey. She wanted to weave fabric and make a vest. we started with a bag then each week we just kept going!  when she was done with her second weaving cloth and we saw it off the loom we both agreed that it seemed more like a cropped top would be better than a vest. We talked about design and I showed her a photo of a similar tops we were thinking of. So she and I designed her top cutting out the lining first for a pattern, fit it on the child's dress form, pieced her hand washed and dried saori weaving and cut out and sewed and lined her blouse/top she wanted it smooth on the inside against her skein. She did everything but thread the sewing machine, and warp the loom. So praise or criticisms all go to her, a fiber artist in the making. This is her inner expression and no one else owns her creativity. All I have to say is Hope is amazing! LISTEN ....... this is the sound of a child giggling that is NOT in front of a TV or a computer game , but WEAVING!    The link to the whole process from yarn cloth to blouse is on the picasa photo stream link here on this blog