It’s the first day of Michigan Makers at Scarlett for the 2017-2018 school year! Today as an introduction into making we are making monster pillows. Monster pillows are pillows made with felt, thread, and embellishments, to create cute or scary monsters. Some of the skills the students will be learning are using a straight stitch or overcast stitch to close the edges of their monsters.

The students were ready to jump in once we introduced ourselves. There were a lot of questions about how to thread needles, and how to get started. However, once they mastered their basic stitch of choice they were ready to go all for it. Some went from crazy shapes out of the felt while others made more traditional square pillow shapes. For colors we had a couple different options making this a fun cast of monsters. Some students quickly learned that the larger the shape and the smaller the stitches the longer it took to finish sewing the pieces together to get to the stuffing and decorating part.

For decorations there was a big box of junk. The best part was exploring the box to see what was inside and see what could be made with all the random pieces of stuff. One student found a necklace that lit up when a switch was hit. There was plenty of yarn and string. As the items got more unique so too did the final monster creations. Even those who were not able to finish had fun monsters to show for it at the end of the day.