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.

I first designed the patterns, then taught the design to a samplemaker from Borderline's Karen artisan group, then accompanied her to the village in Phop Phra where she could translate the concept to students. We purchased hand-woven fabrics at the small on-site shop, and combined them with plain fabrics from the Mae Sot market. Designs were simple enough to sew by hand, but the students could use machines if they had time to learn. We repeated this toy workshop at other schools upon request, but this group's quality was high enough to sell the toys and generate income for the students.