Sunday, May 4, 2014

Whole lotta stitchin' goin on...


4th graders learned to create a design using radial symmetry as well as the skills of threading needles, tying knots, and sewing on a button. With so much focus on technology these days, I like to balance it out with some longstanding traditional techniques.
First we examined examples of radial symmetry such as these:


Next, we made a few warm-up sketches, loaded our hoops, and began with the button.



Once the buttons were on, we demonstrated the running stitch, the back stitch and the cross stitch; after that students were free to experiment with stitching and design.


























7 comments:

  1. I love this! And apparently the students do, too! I think my high school students would like to do this project. I discovered using embroidery without pre-designing it with a stamped or drawn image, quite out of necessity, when I felt a strong need to embroider once, but had no patterns and didn't want to take the time to draw it out first, and I wondered why I hadn't done it years ago. It puts intuitive thought into the process. Thanks for sharing! Compliment your students for a great job on these!

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  2. I love, love, love this....I use to embroider when I was in my teens...remember those bell bottom, hip hugger jeans in the 60's? I embroidered all over them...sure with I still had them. I will be learning Amazigh embroidery in Morocco at a women's co-op...there is meaning behind the designs. Valuable for children to learn how to use their hands at more than texting and keyboard. It takes skill to use a needle and thread.

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    1. I agree wholeheartedly. I love devices as much as the next guy, but not at the cost of losing our handcrafting skills.

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    2. I too had some blue chambray "workshirts" we called them in the 70's, embroidered with rainbows, animals, names, all kinds of cool stuff. I think I may have mine in the attic...

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  3. So awesome! I love stitching with kids. I will admit I am afraid to do it now that I am back in public school bc my classes are so large. How many kids are in the classes that do this?

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    1. Thanks! My 4th grades have about 24-27 kids each.

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  4. Totally gorgeous project idea Hope - love it and will no doubt use it in future! Thanks!

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