KAREN HANDMADE SOFT TOYS
These soft toys were a partnership between Spinning Top and Borderline Collective. I designed several toys for the students of Thoo Mweh Khee migrant school to work on during their free time. TMK is a boarding school in Phop Phra, Thailand, with many students feeling lonely and isolated from their families in Myanmar. Over the years with Spinning Top's support, the school had grown into a small village with housing for teachers, a fish farm, vegetable gardens, and importantly for our purposes, on-site loom weavers. The majority of the students and teachers were ethnically Karen (Kayin), and while the weavers were from neighboring Mon State, the fabrics created were thoroughly Karen designs.
These soft toys were a partnership between Spinning Top and Borderline Collective. I designed several toys for the students of Thoo Mweh Khee migrant school to work on during their free time. TMK is a boarding school in Phop Phra, Thailand, with many students feeling lonely and isolated from their families in Myanmar. Over the years with Spinning Top's support, the school had grown into a small village with housing for teachers, a fish farm, vegetable gardens, and importantly for our purposes, on-site loom weavers. The majority of the students and teachers were ethnically Karen (Kayin), and while the weavers were from neighboring Mon State, the fabrics created were thoroughly Karen designs.
This is the translator/teacher that I trained to make the designs. There were 3 versions: a monster, an owl, and a rabbit.
Although the translator did not speak any English, she understood my patterns and my limited Burmese (hers was limited as well). She was able to speak directly to the children in Karen language.
Although there are some sewing machines on-site, they were of the industrial variety and we worried about teaching such young girls to use them. We opted for completely hand-sewing the toys and telling the children that they could apply this slow, careful way of work to other areas of life.
One of the Mon ethnic weavers living on "campus", weaving Karen ethnic cloth by hand.
