While I was busy seal hunting this week, Laura was at the school sewing for her Professional Improvement Week. Laura and her friend Patricia hired two locals to teach them how to sew parkas and amautis.
This is the lining for Laura's amauti. The amauti is the traditional way of carrying your baby around town. The giant hood covers the mom and the baby and keeps them warm in the winter.
The girls did an amazing job with the trim on the amauti. All of the trim that you see is a combination of several different trims. Most of the materia was bought in the capital city Iqaluit and then brought back to Igloolik. A lot of the communities have their own unique style of amautis.
Laura sewed my parka. This is my lining all sewn together. The point on the hood is the traditional style for Igloolik men.
A picture of my finished parka. It is hard to see where the fur ends and where my beard begins. I still need to choose some trim for the bottom of the parka but it is very difficult because many of the trim patterns are very girly.
Laura also had a chance to make a couple of small parkas for when the baby gets older. This fabric is the same colour as my parka. We are going to add fur when we find something that isn't as overwhelming as my fur.
The second parka. This parka was made for about a 2-3 year old. It is so small that it only took 1 metre of material to make. The trim colour is the same colour as Laura's amauti.
Patricia hired this elder Marie. She helped both Laura and Patricia a lot and was very knowledgeable.
Linda Sheena is the girl that Laura hired. She is a grade 10 student and made Laura's amauti all by herself. She is a very good kid and spent all week at the school working. When Laura paid her, she was very excited to go and buy material so she could make her own parka.
This has nothing to do with sewing but it is pretty cute. Dan and Kim's dogs Toby and Kajuq have been climbing and staring into our window quite often. Gizmo and Steeler are quite interested and they spend quite a bit of time staring at each other. The cats will meow but I don't think that the dogs are very scared.
