A Saori hand woven wedding dress chapter 7

Kori arrived with a beautiful bouquet of flowers she grew this week. Her  Talented mother and Kori are  growing all of the flowers for her wedding that is going to be at the end of September and creating the arragments. That sounds so amazing.
Kori has brought me several bouquets and I have enjoyed them all, this one  is so sweet and has a fantastic fragrance from a special Jasmine  !

 ( photo of Kori's  bouquet three days latter) she has inherited an amazing horticultural talent form her mother and father .

  She is  pressing

 You will notice that I have not included shots of her whole dress! After the wedding (sept 27) I will post more photos of her entire finished dress and add more photos that Kori will send  me of her wedding so chapter 8 will be posted in about a month.

 As the dress finishing begins Kori does hand work, and beautifully .

I made  small covered buttons  out of her same hand woven fabric for Kori as a gift

Sewing buttons

Kori's grand mother Iia was Estonian and immigrated to the US as a young woman. Iia was separated from her mother  alone when she was 16 and escaped to Sweden during the invasion when the Russians over took Estonia. I want to inject a bit history here in case thoses who do not know about Estonia's past will then be able to grasp this a bit better. Estonia as a country did not regain back there independeance till 1988. The semi-genocide of Estonia's population is a very little known fact here in the west and it has pratically been forgotten.

 Iia married a doctor Charles (a US citizen) who served in the war and  he and Iia met in college . Kori's mother was one her children. Iia's mother Minda was not reunited with her daughter until 8 years after Iia came to the United States. 

 Minda was living in Scotland, and they found each other through the missing persons bureau set up by the US after WWII. Minda came to live in Cortez where Iia and Charles were living (she worked to support herself and lived in her own apartment).

I mention this because in the begining of the first chapters of Kori's wedding dress we talked about her Maternal grandmother's Iia who's primary self expression was through fiber arts.

 Classic  examples of some Estonian hand woven  wool skirt fabrics

 Antique Estonian knitting patterns samples

 I watched as Kori's amazing aptitude and artistic sense of learning skills of warping, threading and weaving unfolded. I learned more about her grand mother through the stories she told me of her late Iia then the realization came to me that Kori had inherited genes of this rich Estonian heritage. 

I was deeply touched as I felt a full circle of compleation. An Estonian rebirth , in a small way, emerge through kori's hand woven and designed wedding dress. Her grandmother's hertiage skills are living on.

Share your art, your crafts your stories, recipies, skills …..you heritage …… hand them down to the next generation.

This wedding dress is more than an amazing piece of art celebrating Kori and Toby's union, it has woven family,history and healing with every pass of the shuttle.

"Thank you  for creating your wonderful blog where family members can watch the process that we've gone through to make the dress. It is a really valuable record, and I am so touched that you have put so much time into it--thank you" 

love K

Peaceful weaving

Jill Nickolene Sanders

www.saorisantacruz.com

My Etsy shop