Second Grade Story Quilt

The Second graders are currently working on a class quilt. Each child is hand sewing a picture using embroidery and applique techniques. Students used a pattern square to cut out their background fabric, and had to use their measuring skills to cut strips for a border. Each square tells a little part of the collaborative, oral story they improvised in class. Their story is about a dragon who loved to eat bacon. Actually he couldn’t get enough of it! The story took our friendly, bacon eating, dragon on a journey over the ocean, through forests and caves. During which, he passed snapping sharks, a swift pterodactyl, and a pesky monkey, all trying to get his bacon!

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First Grade Mini Pocket Pillows

First-graders have begun hand sewing! We spent much time learning how to thread our needles and tie our beginning knot in the thread. With weaving under their belt, continuing students had a good understanding of the motion of sewing, and new students bravely jumped right in, swiftly getting the hang of it!  In no time we were hand stitching! Students began with using the Straight (or Running) Stitch to embroider their names into small fabric squares. Then, students continued practicing their Straight (or Running) Stitch some more by sewing a box around their name. After completion, students chose a smaller piece of fabric to sew as a pocket onto a second fabric square. Put the two pieces of fabric together, add the Overcast stitch to sew the edges together, insert a little bit of fluffy stuffing, and you’ve got a mini pocket pillow! Watch for these creations coming to sleepy bedtime near you!

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Kinder Fabric Portraits

Hopefully the Fabric Portraits made it home safe, and are up on a wall somewhere in the home. After handling and exploring a variety of fabrics, students could articulate the differences and similarities between these fabrics. The students then got to use fabric, and even more exciting cut fabric! Cutting was a completely new experience for most students, thus challenging, but after a few classes, and some help from our parent volunteers, they got it down! Students were very proud of their work and had loads of details to point out.

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Sewing Rotation Wish List

Sewing Rotation Classes are currently in need of the following items:

• Fabric Scissors: For little fingers and big ones too and for the lefties. (Please let me know if you would like to donate lefty scissors, since we don’t need too many, we mainly need lefty scissors for the primary grades)  Fiskars scissors are the best kind especially for the beginning cutters in the primary levels. Also I think we can sharpen the ones we have for the older kids if someone would like to arrange for that, however we need them in our hands on Mondays, Tuesdays,  and Wednesdays.

• Thread: In many colors for machine sewing as well as embroidery thread on spools.

• Buttons: Large and medium sized buttons in bright colors.

• Needles: Universal sewing machine needles size 14 and 16 as well as tapestry needles with large eyes and a rounded not so sharp point.

• Socks: Clean used socks that have lost their other half are perfect, even if they have some holes. Argyle, stripped, polka dotted, black, lime green, white, short, long, any sock that can be transformed into a sock friend

• Stuffed Animals: Lets turn the old into something new! We will be needing small and medium stuffed animals to be reassembled into unimaginable new mutant creatures.

• Stuffing: We need lots of this stuff for stuffing our unique creations and pillows.

• T-Shirts: Clean out those T-shirts you and the kids are no longer wearing or fun ones you might come up upon while out thrifting. The kids will get to use the T-shits to makes skirts, dresses, “franken” T’s, bags, scarves, you name it!

• Sewing Machines: As of now we have 7 working machines. With 17 students in each rotation, it would be supper sweet to have 8-9 machines in the classroom. This would mean I could have two children on each machine working in pairs and therefor increasing their productivity, while minimizing the time the kids would have to wait to use the machine.  Also having a few more will help at times when we need to get one or a few serviced. This is a SUPER wish though, we have come a long way from the day when we only had two machines and seven is definitely manageable!

Please check back as I might add new wishes or make changes to the ones up already.

Thank you all for your contributions to our Sewing Classes, it is greatly appreciated!

Krystina