Conner Prairie Spinners Featured in The Times

A program sponsored by our partner organizations, ISA, was featured in The Time! Every year, Sue Payne trains several Conner Prairie youth in the fiber arts to compete at the Indiana State Fair's Sheep to Shaw Competition!

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I love to watch Conner Prairie youth volunteers sit at their spinning wheels or weaving looms practicing their skills, knowing that they’re keeping alive the tradition of the historic art. Youth volunteers ages 10 to 18, male and female, learn spinning and weaving at the Fishers interactive history park, to not only volunteer in Conner Prairie’s Loom House but to also compete at the Indiana State Fair. This weekend, the youth volunteers and their program leader Sue Payne are packing up 21 spinning wheels, four weaving looms, raw fleece and boxes of equipment and heading to the State Fair Fairgrounds on Sunday morning to spin and weave in an intense and fun competition. Beginning at 10 a.m., the youth will have four hours to make a scarf in this annual Sheep to Shawl contest that runs until 2 p.m.,with an auction of handmade contest items to be sold at 3 p.m. in the Indiana Arts Building. To make a scarf, the youth volunteers do everything from carding a fleece, which is preparing it for spinning, to spinning it on spinning wheels, to plying, which is twisting two strands of wool together, then weaving it, said Sarah E. Morin-Wilson, Conner Prairie’s youth experience manager. The competition will allow four hours, with an optional break, for four teams of six to complete a scarf. “It’s very exciting just to see all of that energy and everything to get done in that four-hour time period,” Morin-Wilson said. She remembers when she started working at Conner Prairie in 2003, and the competition started with one team. A second team was added the second year, a third team the next year and then a fourth team the next year. A maximum of 32 Conner Prairie youth volunteers compete in the Sheep to Shawl competition, with each team dressed in a theme, with crazy costumes. “In the youth category, we are the only beast of our kind. I’ve never heard of a program like ours where that many kids who spin and weave find each other,” she said. “There are other kids in the world that do spin and weave but where you can actually get them together in groups, that’s a pretty rare thing.” While there is a maximum of eight on a team, only six can compete at a time. The fastest spinners, the best weavers and plyers, and the very best carders will compete with their team the entire time, while their teammates will rotate out. “While they’re waiting, they represent Conner Prairie by kind of standing on the edges, explaining to the public passing by, what on earth is going on. A lot of people are fascinated but they don’t understand, ‘Why are all of these kids here with spinning wheels? We didn’t know that still existed.’ So they talk about the fact that they’re from Conner Prairie and what it’s all about. That leaves the people in the contest able to focus on what they’re doing,” Morin-Wilson said. An adult team from Conner Prairie, most in their early 20s, who call themselves “Expired Youth Spinners,” will also compete in the adult category of the competition. “They enjoyed it when they were youth in the program, and now they’re continuing to do that,” she said. Why is this State Fair Sheep to Shawl competition important at Conner Prairie? “It teaches largely a lot of teamwork and leadership,” Morin-Wilson said. There are captains on each team, and they have to organize and communicate with members on their team, put together a poster, design a pattern, put the strings on the loom. “It also teaches a lot of problem-solving skills.” The youth volunteers have to be prepared for anything, including what to do if a thread breaks in the middle of competition. It also teaches a lot of STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math) skills. “There is so much counting and calculating when designing a pattern and working a loom,” Morin-Wilson said. “And there’s the artistic side, keeping an historic skill going, making it relevant to the modern generation.” What do youth volunteers do during spinning training at Conner Prairie? They practice the skill, and this time of year, they design patterns, dye yarn and prepare for the State Fair by getting all of the equipment together, and they’re mentoring each other, Morin-Wilson said. They all learn from Sue Payne, their spinning mentor. “Sue Payne has been the driving force behind this ever since we started this. It was her idea that we try to get some of the youth together to form a team, and it has grown exponentially since then, all due really to Sue.” Many of the youth volunteers go on to volunteer in Conner Prairie’s Loom House. There are several Conner Prairie programs dedicated to spinning, plus some stops in Prairietown show spinning. The spinning program has been in place for the past 15 years. Payne has been spinning and weaving for 40 years and was fortunate to learn the craft from “incredible weavers” at Conner Prairie, where she has been a member of the textiles staff all of that time. The textiles staff makes the Conner Prairie textiles that are sold in the museum’s gift shop. Conner Prairie’s youth volunteer spinning program got its start when six 12-year-old girls came to Payne asking to participate in the Sheep to Shawl competition at the State Fair. The State Fair judges were so impressed by the youth volunteers’ work, a youth category was created. Since then, the program has grown to more than three dozen kids, though it’s limited to 32 youth competing. “You always go in, going over, and out, coming under,” Payne said, as she gave practice instructions on the loom to my daughter, who is among the youth volunteers in the State Fair competition. Payne this week was overseeing youth volunteers pre-threading the looms for competition. “If there is a threading error, if they put a thread in the wrong heddle on the wrong harness, you’ll see it in the pattern,” she said. Devin White, 16, Noblesville, a Noblesville High School junior, was setting up a loom for competition, working opposite with Abby Kaufman, 15, a sophomore at Highlands Latin School. White has been a youth volunteer for six years, all during which he has spent about half of his volunteer hours spinning and weaving in the textiles building and volunteering in the Loom House, where he not only spins or weaves but gains confidence and poise by talking to visitors about what he’s doing. “I remember when I first started, there was a boys team, and they asked me to be a part of it….It sounded pretty interesting, so I came in to practice and I really liked it. I’ve been working at it since then,” said White, who started at age 11. This will be his fourth year competing at the State Fair Sheep to Shawl competition. “I like it because it’s everything that we’ve learned. We get to show it off and show that we actually make something. And we get a sense of accomplishment because we made a whole entire scarf,” White said. “That’s really cool to take what you’ve learned from spinning, even four people who just learned how, and to be able to make it into something. I think it’s really cool.” The scarves created in the competition are auctioned, with the money going back into Conner Prairie’s spinning program. In 2017, one of the scarves brought $600, bid by a Fairgoer. Being that each spinning wheel costs about $600, Payne’s goal is to raise between $200 and $400 per scarf, or at least $1,600 total each year, with the auction money from the youth scarves going back into the youth spinning program. Plus, the program also relies on donations. White likes spinning better than weaving.. “With spinning, you can ply it, which is spin it, and make it into yarn and thread, and make more things with it,” he said. White said being in the spinning program he believes is great for his future. “I really like science, and one of the things that I like about this, there is a lot of STEM with math and science in it, because you have to use math for the loom and setting everything up.” He uses science in dying the wool. He held up a clear plastic bag containing the Cochineal bug from Peru. “I really like the process of dying with that, and seeing how a bug can make that bright red color.” The youth volunteers put the bugs in a big pan of water, and watch the water become a dye that’s used to color the wool. White actually got to see the Cochineal on cactus along a trail during his eighth-grade field trip to Peru. “I saw where it comes from,” he said. On Sunday, the fastest spinners, the best weavers and plyers, and the very best carders will be in the competition the entire time, while their teammates will rotate out during the competition. “I’m continually impressed with our youth spinners,” Morin-Wilson saisd. “This has been a very good year of captains having their teams organized. They’ve been focused this year, and that’s been great to see. I love seeing the creativity of the kids. I’m very proud of them, also very grateful to everyone who has gone into mentoring them, including our older youth.” -Contact Betsy Reason at betsy@thetimes24-7.com.