On top of running a café that delivers its orders throughout the school day and gardening a plot of land on school grounds, the students of Mrs. Sierra Anway’s special education class at Fountain Hills High School have also taken up selling their crafts.

The students debut their new craft shop last month at The Great Fair where they had a slew of clothing and accessories for sale that they had tie-died.

Despite the cold weather, the students did well at the fair.

“We ended up making a lot of money,” Anway said. “Which will all go back into their program.”

Anway decided on starting with tie-dye because of the artistic freedom it provides for the students.

“The students have made all the products,” Anway said. “It is kind of cool because it is something that a lot of them can do independently because it is so abstract and they turn out super awesome.”

Tie-dye might appear to be only one simple design but Anway’s students learned about and created a wide variety of patterns.

“We learned different techniques for the tie-dye process,” Nicole Engler said. “Like the swirl, bullseye, free fall, hearts and the pipe and string. To make the designs you rubber-band the shirt in different spots. Some of the main designs, you rubber-band different spots but in the bullseyes you put one in the middle.”

Eventually Anway said she would like to have the class branch out into different crafts that utilize the students’ other projects, like the garden.

“We have a student who is an amazing drawer,” Anway said. “So she is going to do some drawings here. We are also going to repurpose old furniture. Then, from our garden, we are going to focus more on growing cucumbers to eventually make pickles for sale. A variety of different things, really.”

The next step for the class will be to find a more permanent place to set up shop.

“We are trying to make it so we are in all art fairs around town,” Anway said. “We are also going to be opening a little shop in the office and open that to the public so they can come anytime.”