Creative textile activities

I have to say Jane Austin is one of my favourite writers and Hollywood as her movie maker. I love Pride & Prejudice and Sense & Sensibility but there is more to education than sewing the sampler that is the Certificate of your education and hall pass to marriage back then.

Besides sewing garments, Home Economics provides a great forum for textile education. The options are nearly unlimited if you dare to spend time experimenting with "textiles".

Textile arts are arts and crafts that use plant, animal, or synthetic fibers to construct practical or decorative objects. Here are a few fun projects for home or school. The tab at the top of this blog has a few more with clips on how to do them.

FUN PROJECTS

• Freehand stitching with fabrics, felt, threads by both hand and machine. Choose a theme, create a "painting" from what you see or your favourite photo and make a quilt or hanging. Recycled fabrics/clothing or memento's from your past makes it both more eco-friendly and cheaper on your budget as a "conscious shopper" it will be more meaningful as a work of art.
  
• Make a game from left over pieces of fabric, beads & buttons. 
• Gift cards or books made with left over textile scraps. They could be made in conjunction with mentoring student in the junior school.

(www.clearvisionproject.org.au)

• Different dye activities to make unique textile garments - shibori (www.shibori.com.au or pintrest tutorials) , India Flint, natural dye fabrics (www.indiaflint.com)
  

• Graffiti art in quilting/silk scarves, jeans/lamp shade, beach towel
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Upcycle some clothing to make new clothing or something completely different    

(www.upcyclingclothing.com)

 DESIGN CHALLENGES:

• Make a class theatre or play and incorporate elements across the curriculum or in high school, across learning domains. Here is a website for a production of Go Pinocchio. To inspire a senior textile class, perhaps they could make some costumes for a school theatre??  http://www.theatreofimage.com.au/docs/TextileStudentActivities.pdf

• Wearble art project. This is a great project to consider the design aspects of something and how to create it in textiles.

• School competitions like Wool4Schools (http://www.wool4school.com/) where students present design ideas on a moodboard to the actual production of a garment made from Merino wool. Prizes include an internship and photo shoot with girlfriend magazine.

COMMUNITY TEXTILE PROJECTS

• Link with a local community group eg craft group of older folk and pass skills from the older generation to the younger. Skills like crochet, embroidery, felting, Of course Bluecard requirements may need to be considered. This could also be multi cultural group within the local community. Each community is different so you would need to contact your local community craft or church groups that support mission
• I mention this as it can sometimes put a focus to the creative task and is a project FOR someone. Our young people are often very generous and enthusiastic witht hese type of activities.

(www.cmap.org.uk - community textiles project in Brazil)

This blog is sew easy peasy because one of my passions is for sewing and creating with textiles to be accessible to all. It's helpful to have a range of stimulating textile examples of varying skill to help inspire minds to think of options.

I have found it useful to have my own work books or folders of information handy with a variety of  resources so students have opportunity to do some independent learning and experimenting.

I have pintrest boards around different themes, skills, ideas so I can inspire my own mind with ideas to bring into the classroom.