Saori weaving student for a 3 day workshop

Meet Christina, she came for a 3 day work shop at my Saori Santa Cruz weaving studio.

She is the assistiant designer for  womens bottoms( jeans, paints skirts, etc, and  Jean jackets ) for Levi Strauss in San Francisco .

She is encouraged to find studios to inspire her and Levi Strauss sponsers her decision once a year to get new inspirations for there new season's designs and come back to the  Levi corporate world energized and brimming over with new ideas. I was extreamly honored  to have been choosen by Christina for her "inspiration " studio this year.

Christina had never woven before so after viewing  my finished clothing gallery  she chose yarns of her own choosing for her two days of weaving.
 Her third day will be  clothing design and sewing.

Out on the deck she started winding her bobbins.  Saori looms have a bobbin winders built into each loom.

She was  soon weaving . I call it "weaving bliss" because Saori looms and equipment are designed to for all  ages and abilities , and levels and are for ease of use.

The end of day one Christina had quite a bit of beautiful woven yardage on her loom's cloth beam.
Her color palette  was one from the Pantone color selections for one of her future Levi collections.

2ND  day back at the loom.

playing with white on white
.

Latter in the morning Signe  joined us . She is going to finish weaving her scarf.

As the 2nd day comes to a close we cut off Christina's weaving  from the loom. Over 5 yards, from a brand new weaver!

Christina is heading back to her hotel,  so I washed and dried her saori weaving yardage so that she can sew with it  first thing tomorrow.

Signe's scarf is done too so we remove it from her loom.

I LOVE IT!

 A quick tutorial in twisting fringes . A magnificant sucessful unique saori scarf goes home where she will soak and dry it and wear it in beauty !



DAY 3 Christina has returned to  use her 5 plus yards for clothing designs.

when she was back in  her hotel  the night before she sketched, and cut and ripped off pieces of her jeans, and jackets  that she had brought with her preparing for a day of design applications ,sewing and drafting.

She was excited, and so well preparred.

 The First design she wanted to do was to add a hand woven hood to a mens wear Levi jacket that she had removed the sleeves and seam ripped the collar off the night before .
We drafted several hoods, chose the best one and cut them out of  muslin first  for a trial.   She chose  the special areas of her hand wovens that she liked and cut out the hood  of those sections.

Christina wanted to inset a zipper down the center seam of the hood. She was nervous as she had never sewed a zipper before , but I taught her how , and shared with her my screct tips . She did an amazing job!

FANTASTIC!!  The hood  can lay open or closed!

 A great idea ,she then  cut off the bottom edge of the jacket to shorten it.

Her sketch for the the hooded sleeveless Levi jacket  some iedas we decided not to do on this piece.

On to her second project , transforming a white cotton womans Levi jacket .

Rubbing chalk to paper  to make a pattern for custom panels for the jacket back to be inserted .

Fussy cutting out sections for the seaming details for her jacket back.

 Pieces sewn and incorporated on her jeans jacket back.
I added a few suggestions, to seam the back instead of one large rectangle, and turn the stripes on her hand woven vertical  for the center panel she thought that was a good idea.

Jacket back compleated we looked to add some hand woven interest some place else on the jacket. We decided to pick up interest on her sleeves so we  lined her cuffs with the hand woven fabric  as well, and turned them back.

She LOVES it, and is very pleased to see her sketch take form.. Fantastic weaving  and sewing and designing.


Just enough time left to finish one more design. she wanted to use Saori hand woven fabric for her "cut off "pockets.
A  brilliant idea to extend the pockets that peek out of the cut offs.

We set to work creating the new pockets and sewing them.

IT WORKED!

Christina  holding her transformed cut offs up! How cute of an idea was that!

 Work shop is over and Christina is going up the lovely hwy 1 coast  for her drive back to San Fransisco . She told me she  loved the work shop and she was  so excited to learn skills to achive and expand  her visions.
Respecting students  OWN individuality is very imoprtant to my teaching ethic..
All the weaving, color choices, and designs were hers. I am glad I was there to guide her. and to teach her how to weave.
  It will be exciting if some day I see these Ideas in one of the Levi's  collections in actual production!    I will know there creation was  influenced by an assistiant designer for Levi Strauss , Christina ,who was inspired by her work shop at Saori Santa Cruz with me..


Peaceful Weaving........ in the redwoods
Jill Nickolene Sanders
My web sight www.saorisantacruz.com
my ETSY shop

   A follow up with christina, this email she sent  me ...............