Serious business here

Sewing Club starts up again tomorrow, and we're making pajama pants. Well, starting to make them anyway. My assistant is really focused on getting our kids to be able to read a commercial pattern (I'd much rather they learn how things go together so that they don't need to rely on often poorly-written confusing blueprints and so they can move on to making their own patterns someday) but I guess it is a fairly useful skill, even if it's boring to teach. In light of that tomorrow they're going to start making elastic-waist pj pants from a Simplicity pattern, which shouldn't be too hard.

Anyway, my delightful babies sometimes have difficulty with follow-through, so anyone who wants to do this project is going to need to sign a contract. Thus the seriousness. Here's what I drew up:

I _____________________________ want to make my own pair of pajama pants.

  I promise that in order to make these super cool pajamas…

                1.I will participate in all lessons about pattern reading

                2.I will faithfully attend all meetings (unless I need to miss one for an approved reason) until I    

                finish this project.

I also understand that pajamas are not a quick project, and will take at least six weeks to finish.

___________________________________________                      ___________________

Signature                                                                                                       Date

...and yes, six weeks is an ABSURDLY long time and if it takes that long I will be rather surprised but I want to err on the side of caution here.

Button Cookies

Delicious snack for today's non- denominational end-of-year-winter party at Sewing Club.











...Okay, so they came out of a tube and are not particularly delicious to anyone above the age of 13, but I'm sure the kidlets with love them.

Sewing Club Takes on Social Justice

As a non-denominational-winter-giving-celebration, Sewing club is making pillowcases for Conkerr Cancer. I hope that in the spring we can make a project Linus quilt, but these pillowcases are a really great project for now since we're slightly pressed for time. The construction is really fairly simple, and I think two meetings should be enough time for everyone to make at least one. It was the most fun fabric shopping ever-- I bought a lot of really cool red-tag quilters stuff from Jo-Anns in fun prints I almost never get to use otherwise.

Little Hands, Relatively Small Open Flame

I haven't been writing much (obviously) but I've decided to rectify that. Since I'm back at Cornell, I've started up Sewing Club again, which leaves me bursting full of cool kid crafting that I ought to be recording.

Sewing Club is my little Ithaca attempt to level the achievement gap. Once a week I walk up to a local low income apartment housing complex, toting a heavy bag full of fabric and markers and patterns, and teach a small group of girls and boys ages 8-14 basic sewing skills. I've made a lot of really cool progress with my kids over the time I've been there, and since this is my last year there I'm really trying to go out with a bang, mostly by trying to make our time together as exciting and multidisciplinary as possible.

In an attempt to make this cool and awesome lasting impact, last week I brought in my first ever Sewing Club science experiment, and it went really well. Or, it went really well in terms of the kids liked it and were able to complete the mini lab I had set up, but not really well in terms of the kerfuffle I caused. See, I brought a really simple but awesome fiber science experiment: we took different types of fiber (cotton, polyester, wool, silk, acrylic and some kevlar and steel a professor gave me) and burned them in a tiny tea light, and made notes of the different effect the flame had on each of them. The kids L-O-V-E-D it, and only one teensy burn was sustained. They were even able to identify the tricky mystery fiber I brought! (cotton poly blend.)



Only one bitty issue. I had checked with the program director who said it was fine to do the experiement, but I guess she didn't check her higherups, and apparently (this was news to me) we are under constant video surveillance! Anyway, the people who review the tape called my supervisor in to say open flame was a no-no, and I turned six shades of red when she told me... but its over now, and the kids had a great time.