Waldorf-inspired art for kids: hand-sewing skills

Today's art classes allowed the kids to explore simple hand-sewing projects.  With these art classes that emphasize hand-skills, like knitting or sewing, we hope to equip the kids with useful skills they can use in their everyday life.  Sewing can be used to make a simple toy or gift, repair and mend a favourite shirt or sock, or even sew a new piece of clothing!  It's a basic skill that should not be lost, something essential to pass on to our kids (just like cooking and growing food). 

Our Young Acorns group made small birds from felt, while the older Green Saplings group made larger owls with multi-coloured felt of their choice and stuffed them with wool and organic lavender.  I loved watching the ways each child holds their needle, how much concentration and focus was going on, and the kinds of stitches they made to complete their work.  Each project was unique!

 

Waldorf-inspired art for kids: basic embroidering

Last week's art class for kids introduced them to basic embroidery skills.  The little ones (aged 3-5) worked with yarn on burlap cloth with large blunt needles.  They drew simple designs onto the fabric and used the yarn to embroider over the lines to create their picture.  The older kids (aged 6-12) worked with embroidery floss on cotton, with embroidery hoops to hold the fabric in place.  They used their sketch books to try out a few ideas on paper, then transferred their favourite drawing onto the cloth to be embroidered.  I was amazed at the attention of the older group, who all loved embroidering (all had some sewing experience already) and who all worked steadily at their patterns for more than an hour!  What beautiful creations came from this day!

Mendfulness Retreat at Little City Farm

This past weekend we held our first Mendfulness Gathering here at Little City Farm - an amazing day-long fibre arts retreat that focused on repurposing, reusing and upcycling clothes and working with natural fibres (e.g. spinning and felting wool, natural plant dyes on fabric).  There were 12 workshops that participants could choose from throughout the day, including pattern drafting, creative mending, cyanotype prints on fabric, rag rug making, basket making, and more!  Also great conversations throughout the day, yoga at noon, wood-fired flatbreads and wholesome delicious food at lunch, a free swap give-away area, and mini marketplace at the end of the day.  What a full, inspiring (and rainy) day filled with hands-on projects to take home, and wonderfully creative people all around.  Thanks for everyone's help in making this retreat wonderful, all our volunteers, photographer, workshop facilitators, and participants!

We hope to host monthly "mendfulness" get-togethers (like old-fashioned "mending circles") here at Little City Farm over the winter, to bring together friends, great food, and a chance to share our skills at repairing and repurposing our clothes.  By learning to mend, darn, patch and repurpose our clothes we are not only saving money for our families, but also keeping perfectly good clothes from going to the landfill, and empowering ourselves with new skills to make us more active producers as opposed to passive consumers.  Could you start a mending circle in your neighbourhood?

Here are a few photos from the day -despite the rain we had many busy hands sharing skills and doing beautiful work: