Artist teaches students to spin yarn

NAPERVILLE, Ill. -- Jessica Wolfe carefully untangled, smoothed out and fluffed up a small clump of light brown, tan and black wool as she prepared it to be spun into yarn.

Jessica, a fifth grader at White Eagle Elementary School, and her classmates were learning about the art of spinning from artist-in-residence Charlotte Main.

A world traveler, Main has visited 53 countries, usually staying with indigenous people. She specializes in multicultural art and fibers.

She said that when she learned to spin 37 years ago, it was a frustrating experience and almost brought her to tears. But she said there would be no tears among the White Eagle students.

On her visits around the world, Main said, she saw children as young as 2 spinning yarn as they tagged along with their mothers, who were going to the river to wash clothes. School-age children spun as they sat and talked to friends.

She explained that in Third World countries, people generally grow their own food and make their own clothes.

Main's global message was clear to the students.

"I think we sometimes take clothes for granted and where other people in other countries have to make them and they only have one pair of clothes. We don't have to make clothes, we just buy them," Brian said.

And making their own clothes doesn't mean they run to a store to buy fabric and a pattern. Clothes are created from scratch, beginning with fibers from animals or plants that must be spun into thread or yarn.

As an example, she brought clothing a Peruvian boy or girl might wear. Often, children there have only one outfit, and sometimes that is handed down from an older sibling.

When she was in the Amazon Basin, she said, she saw men making fishing line out of plant fibers by rolling them on their thighs.

In the classroom, Main handed out red yarn, chopsticks and balls of white clay for students to use in making their own drop spindles.

She instructed the students to flatten the ball of clay, then push the chopstick through it. The yarn would be tied to the chopstick, wrapped around the clay and tied to the top of the chopstick. After fluffing and straightening the wool, the students tied the red yarn to an edge of the wool, held onto the wool clump and slowly began to pull and elongate the wool into a strand of yarn.

Fifth-grader Kevin Cordes turned his wool into a perfect piece of yarn.

"It wasn't that hard," he said. "All you had to do was spin it and just pull. It's kind of cool because you wouldn't get to do this often."

The wool had a slight gamy smell because the lanolin was left in it, but Main said that made the wool easier to twist into yarn.

She complimented Brian Williams, who made a perfectly weighted and balanced spindle.

"It's hard at first, but then gets easier as we go," Brian said.

Main's global message was clear to the students.

"I think we sometimes take clothes for granted and where other people in other countries have to make them and they only have one pair of clothes. We don't have to make clothes, we just buy them," Brian said.

"We're very fortunate," said another student, Haley Sterlane.