It’s The Final Countdown!

Wow! I can hardly believe this learning project is over, it’s been a great few months learning something new! While I may be done blogging about it, I plan on continuing my skirt-making. Not only is it a huge part of who I am and my culture, but this journey has also been incredibly difficult. I overcame many challenges and pushed through it to eventually create something so beautiful and meaningful to me. So let’s take a look back on my journey!

Week 1:

This week was simply introducing my project. I explained what it meant to me and why I had finally decided to take this on. As an Indigenous woman, I felt strongly about wanting to choose something that represented who I am, and was a big of my culture. I was torn between the ribbon skirts, medallion beading, and star blankets. I ended up choosing this one because I’ve wanted to make something Indigenous for my daughter (who is Metis) for her entire life. I want to be able to pass on some teachings to her, so this project was very personal to me.

Week 2:

This week I used some of the same online platforms as the previous week, but I focused more on the creation of skirts. I looked for differing techniques, easy for beginners, and just what the overall skirt outcome was. I knew I wanted to make mine a little bit different then the typical horizontal ribbons, but I first needed to understand the process!

Week 3: 

I had always known what significance a ribbon skirt held to me, as a Saulteaux woman, but I wanted to dig a little deeper, so I did some research on many different platforms including Indigenous blogs, YouTube, TikTok and even Google. This week I learned why ribbon skirts are meaningful to other Indigenous cultures!

Week 4: 

New tools week , this was interesting to me because I couldn’t think of anything that might be helpful to me, until I actually came across an app on my computer called ClipChamp. It is a video-editing app. I had never tried it before so it did take some playing around, but once I got the hang of it, I actually really enjoyed using it. It helped me edit clips and mold them together to create my videos for my learning project! This was the app I decided to use every time I made a video for my learning project. Should I continue to make YouTube videos, I will continue using this app.

Week 5: 

Baby steps were the way for me, I ended up going out to find some materials and fabric. After my research in previous weeks, I had learned that cotton was best for ribbon skirts. I swear I walked around Fabricland looking silly for 20 minutes, before discovering that they had an entire section of Indigenous-inspired fabrics right next to the other stack of cotton fabrics. I browsed for a long time and ended up bring home 4 different fabrics. I also got a measuring tape, coloured sewing pins, and elastic band for the waist. This was one of the most fun weeks for me.

Week 6: 

This is when I faced my first challenge, which I later realized was not a problem at all, I’m actually just bad at math LOL. Anyways, I felt that something was not right with the measurements when I was following along with the blog because the fabric kept being an awkward shape, so I had to re-evaluate the content that I was choosing to follow. So what did I learn this week? sometimes things are not gonna go as planned and you may have to switch things up last minute, but it will all work out. Have a little faith in  yourself.

Week 7:

This was the absolute best part of the project. I did hit some more speed bumps, but I went to my mom and she helped me through it. It took 6 hours of hard work to create this beautiful skirt. Could I have maybe made this blog post in many parts? Yes, I probably should have honestly, but I was too excited to show everybody the hard work I had put in. There was a final product and I was very proud!!

Week 8: 

As the first skirt had taken so long to create and I am a full-time student, full-time employee, and I have a lot of other personal things going on in my life, I couldn’t find the time to make the next skirts that I had planned. I did however want my learning journey to continue so I decided to do some more research on Ribbon Skirts, I specifically wanted to look into a potential side gig of making and selling. I looked at the general pricing through many vendors, including personal: Facebook MarketPlace, VarageSale, and Kijiji. I then looked up what materials to get started would cost me. This was a tricky task because you truly don’t know what you will need until you’re there, so I chose the basics. I discovered that it would be a lot of work, but could be worth it.

Week 9:

This week, I focused on making a plan for my next skirts. I have chosen to make matching skirts for my best friend and I. I looked up different designs for matching ribbon skirts but nothing stood out to me, nothing felt special enough, so I designed my own.

Final Week: 

Well as expected, sometimes I have regrets. This week I learnt that I need to stop doubting myself. My decisions are wise and I need to have faith and confidence in myself. I needed to remind myself that I am an intelligent person and while I may question my decisions sometimes, this was a good one.

Overall, I think that my learning project taught me a lot about myself. Did I learn a new skill? Yes, I did. Multiple new skills actually. But more importantly, I learned to trust myself, have confidence and be patient. Anything worth learning requires patience. Learning to sew, is quite challenging but with some patience, I came a long way. I will continue making skirts, I’ve actually started another one as a Christmas gift. Hopefully when you read this you can see my learning project for the beauty it was!

Signing off,

Christen!