Have you ever picked a long piece of grass or a cattail or another leaf and wondered what you could make with it? Often, the answer is something very useful if you know how to do just a few things you’ll learn in this course. The forests and prairies and wetlands of Minnesota provide many wonderful fibers that people have been using for hundreds of years to make rope and string. Dogbane, cattails, basswood trees, and flax plants all have long, strong fibers in them that have many uses. The Ojibwe of northern Minnesota used basswood bark to sew and tie their world together without metal nails. And Scandinavian fishermen used natural fibers to weave their nets. We’ll cover how to harvest and process wild fiber plants, and little and big fingers alike will play with twisting the plant fibers into twine. You'll end up with samples of twine, knowledge about plant fibers, and the skills to keep twisting.

This online course is open to adults or adult/child pairs with kids as young as 5. Registration is per device (so an adult/child pair need only register once). In order for the instructor to have time to mail materials to the students, registration for this course closes on October 22nd.

All students will receive a package in the mail with all the fibers needed for the class ahead of time.

Required Tools

In addition to the mailed materials, students need to provide:

• A pair of scissors
• A bowl (any size- cereal to mixing bowl) of tap water
• Elmer’s glue (or something similar)
• Beads with larger holes, ribbons, buttons, yarn or fabric scraps to incorporate into your projects
• A computer or laptop with reliable internet connection