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 just a few easy tricks 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. Take home samples of twine, knowledge about plant fibers, and the skills to keep twisting. This session is open to kids 7-12 without an adult. 

Required Tools

• To keep everyone safe, all kids and adults will need to wear a mask throughout this course.
• 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!