A few weeks ago, I was contacted by a teacher at a local school, who wanted to make a quilt for Project Linus with her children during their Art Week. She and her assistant came round to see me, and discussed their ideas. They wanted to do a Noah's Ark theme, with different animals appliqued onto idividual blocks, but weren't sure whether this was possible with Year 5 and 6 (9 and 10 year old) children. I was able to introduce them to the wonders of Heat'n'Bond, and after a rummage in my donated fabric collection, they went away very happy.
On Wednesday, DD and I went over to the school to help out. The children in this group were Year 5s, a mixture of boys and girls.
First they chose their designs, and drew them onto Heat'n'Bond.
Here you can see an octopus, a giraffe and half a butterfly ready to trace. (Unfortunately, due to concerns about abuse, I am not able to take photos including children's faces. Never mind, it's good to see youngsters with needles in their hands, even if we can't see the expressions of concentration on their faces!)
Here are the parts of the butterfly ready to cut out and be ironed onto the background fabric.
Lots of effort as everyone (including me!) tries to remember how to do blanket stitch.
It's not as easy as it looks to pull the needles through Heat'n'Bond, even using both hands.
Here's an accident waiting to happen - it was inevitable that someone would sew the block to their trousers, although strangely enough, it was neither of these two boys!
Here are the blocks which the Year 6 group had already worked on, ready to finish the next day. Obviously there will be two of each animal and just one ark. I'll look forward to receiving the finished quilt, and will post pictures when it's ready.
7 comments:
This is a lovely post! So good to see the young 'uns sewing and for such a good cause too.
BTW, you won a little something on my 100th post draw.
Fabulous!!! going back three or four years a friend of mine who's a Y2 teacher and a quilter roped me in to do a Linus quilt with her class. Each child had two squares of pale blue and the choice of two squares in bright patterned fabric. They wrote their name on one blue square and drew a picture of themselves on the other with fabric pens, then stitched them into a fourpatch with the other two squares. I then made this up with some great navy, red and white beach ball fabric larger squares in a chequerboard pattern and finished with a thin pale blue border and a wide beach ball border binding it in the pale blue. The kids managed the sewing amazingly well and I quilted it pretty heavily to make extra sure their running stitches held
sadly I never took a photo!
Wow fantastic Lynda!
Last year I did a craft thing at the school and had to remember the blanket stitch...never managed it :o)
what a marvelous project for everyone! Let's hope there are at least 1-2 future quilters in this bunch who were turned on to the possibilities by what you helped them do.
It's great to see how children interpret things. And even greater to get them hooked on crafts, especially in these days when most of them just want TV and play station.
Lynda, I've tagged you - hope you don't mind... just ignore it if you don't fancy it :O)
Post a Comment