Teaching young people to sew.

In my main job I am a Senior Youth Work Practitioner who runs Swanley Youth Hub.  As part of my work there I've been teaching the young people how to sew and creating art projects.  Back in June I got the young people to draw and colour designs onto fabric.  The theme was summer.  Its taken some time from the designs being done to completing the quilt, but we have.  Here is our quilt.

The white squares were not equal in size, so I would recommend that you measure the squares out equally before hand, rather than randomly cutting out squares.  This meant we've had to cut bits off the pictures when putting the strips of fabric in between. But for a first quilt, everyone at the youth centre are really pleased.  The quilt is hanging on a wall in the green room in the centre.

We made the designs on white squares cut from a white sheet bought from Asda.  The strips are made from a pink sheet from Asda and the backing and binding is made from a purple sheet from Asda.  Using sheets worked well considering we don't have money to buy standard price fabric.  We are about to start another quilt with the theme winter.  We are going to be using printable fabric for the designs and will use sheets again to make the strips, the backing and the binding.

Our other sewing project has been to learn how to use printable fabric.  We've printed pictures of ourselves on the fabric and turned them into cushions.  The cushions have all had lots of positive comments and lots of people want to be featured on their own cushions.

These are cushions using photos of staff.  I am the white cushion on the left.  The picture was taken using the special effects on the macbook we have at the centre.  Its certainly a different way of presenting photos, other than having them on the wall.  Our cushions are unique and personal to the youth centre.

Crochet Cushions

I've blogged previously showing crochet cushions in the process of being made, but I've not blogged or shown the finished pictures of the cushions.  This post will be quite photo heavy, but it will show you my cushions and what I am doing with them now that I have finished them.

Most of the cushions were made from the free wool that comes with Lets Craft Knitting and Crochet Magazine.  You get just enough wool to make a cushion front.  I have then used good quality cotton fabric to make the cushions with and added coordinating buttons on the back to hold the cushions together.

So I've made 9 cushions which are going to be available to be bought at the pop up shop being run by Emporia Fabric and Crafts in Ashford.  You can find out more about this shop which has just celebrated it first birthday by clicking here.

Another crochet cushion

Following on from last weekends experiment with cushion covers, this weekend I made another cushion using a square of crochet I made in June.  I used the wool that came with Let's Get Crafting Knitting & Crochet Magazine issue 60 and used the pattern for the Shell Cushion cover from issue 56 from Let's Get Crafting Knitting & Crochet Magazine.

This is the cushion.  I made some changes from last weekend's attempts.  My fabric ruler and rotary cutter had arrived from Amazon.  I cut a square 40cm x 40cm and it was very square this time (unlike last weeks)  I cut two pieces for the back 40cm x 30cm.  The crochet square was backed by the square piece of fabric and the back pieces overlapped like last week.  The slightly bigger pieces made for a much better overlap than on the last two cushions.  I don't have a walking foot for the sewing machine yet, and I had the same problem as last week with the top layer of fabric moving as I sewed all the layers together.

On finishing the cushion I then made two button holes and attached two buttons to match the colours in the cushion cover.  I like the effect of the crochet, it has a look of an argyle jumper, even though it is the crochet shell pattern. I would like to sell crochet cushions like this on the Internet for £15 per cushion. I feel this is a realistic price and it does offer some profit on the cost of making the cushion.  What do you think of the cushion?  Would you buy one?  Would you pay £15 for it?  Let me know what you think.