Our studio was transformed this week into a past crafts maker space. The students participated in a workshop that posed the question “It’s 1850 and you want a new doona cover for your bed…..what do you do?”. The students were reminded that ‘Kmart’ didn’t exist! They concluded they would have to buy the fabric and make it themselves. The students started to develop the understanding that in the past, both adults and children made soft furnishings, toys and clothes. We discussed how early people used bone needles to sew together leather and skin from animals, then as time went on, our ways of making became more sophisticated through sewing machines.
We started to think about the possibilities of what we could make and do – toys, bags, quilts, clothes were some of the ideas.
This week, we started to equip the students with some of the necessary skills they would need to create these things. Sewing and french knitting are the two things that we will focus on for the rest of the term.