About

Make a 4-inch woven basket as Nancy Sigo, a Suquamish weaver, shares her wealth of knowledge about weaving with Western red cedar and other plant materials.

Students will prepare cedar bark strips for weaving and learn how to split them to desired widths. Nancy will provide her prepared materials in kits, so students will have enough of the beautifully prepared split cedar to make a woven basket about 4 inches high and 4 inches across.  Students will learn the techniques of basic weaving and twining using dyed raffia and will learn about, and have the opportunity to use, bear grass as a decorative weaving element.  Students will use natural or dyed materials as they are designing their baskets and will learn to control the shape as they progress and to finish the edge with a beautiful folded and wrapped rim.

Material fee:

Students should bring cash or a check for the kit they wish to use:

• $60 kit, Includes white raffia, rafia in your choice of one other color, and prepared cedar strips.
• $80 kit, pre-packaged and color coordinated, with white raffia; died rafia in red, brown, maroon, blue, green, or purple; and cedar strips in shades of red, brown, black or green. (Cedar strip colors may be limited.)

Instructor:  Nancy Sigo, a member of the Suquamish Tribe, learned to gather, process, prepare and weave cedar bark to make traditional objects for a wide variety of functional uses.  More than  26 years ago, Nancy began to learn from her relatives all aspects of how to weave with Western Red Cedar, and many other weaving materials like beargrass, orthwest sweet grass, rye grass, and nettles.  Nancy shares important knowledge from her own life experiences and her Salish weaving culture.  When, where, and how to gather; how to process and store the materials, so many lessons to learn.  Nancy feels very blessed with the gift of weaving from a long line of grandmother teachers.  She looks forward to meeting others who share a desire to learn this type of weaving and will gladly share that knowledge.