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Course

Fun with Plant Fibers for Families

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Course Overview

Have you ever picked a long piece of grass or a cattail or another leaf and wondered what you could make with it? The forests, 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 have used basswood bark to sew and tie their world together without metal nails. And Scandinavian fishermen have used natural fibers to weave their nets. We’ll learn about how wild fiber plants are gathered, and little and big fingers alike will play with twisting the plant fibers into twine. Take home a small completed project: a bracelet, necklace, or something else created from your imagination.

This course welcomes up to two students ages 5-10 accompanied by an adult.

Required Tools

  • Please bring beads with larger holes, ribbons, buttons, yarn or fabric scraps to incorporate into your projects. We will have some available, but the more we can all share, the better!

Currently Scheduled Sessions