Here is another school project that I helped with (many years ago…). Inspired by an existing owl sewing project from Ms. Mar and Mr. Lum’s past years, we decided to expand the animal selection and attach the student sewn animals onto traditional Japanese fabric hanging dividers called noren.

I must credit fellow Rosa Parks parents Sergio Navarro-Duran for creating the beautiful seasonal tree designs and undertaking the indigo wax resist dyeing technique and Akiko Funabashi for sewing all four noren.

As a class, the students were asked what animals and imagery reminded them about each season.

In the meantime, Sergio started creating the sketches for the trees.

Once the students made their selections, they were divided into the four seasons. Using Sergio’s tree sketch, I laid out their animals. We added felted name tags where students would hand embroider their names in hiragana or katakana.

Before sewing, we provided the students with guidelines and a pattern templates breakdown for each animal.

Finally students could start sewing! It took several sessions and could not have been done without the help of many parent volunteers to supervise and assist.

As the students sewed, Sergio went to work on transferring his sketch to the linen noren. This was Sergio’s first time dying trying new techniques and I would say he 

Volunteer parents hand-stitched the animals onto the finished noren.