This session started off with a bang! Immediately after the bell rang to release students from class for the day the fire alarm went off. As you can imagine fire alarms are much more chaotic when students are not being marched out in lines by their teachers. There was quite a bit of running and screaming. Mostly for dramatic effect and not due to any emergency. Luckily the alarm was a false one and after a few minutes the alarm stopped and we could settle in for the session that day. On this day we had low turnout. Only one student came by. This did mean that we were able to give more individualized attention and feedback. Missing from this session the sense of camaraderie in the group; which is something the students enjoy.

The challenge for today was to create a cross stitch patch. There were two options for choosing a pattern. The first option was to choose a pattern from some that had been pre-selected. Optionally, the students could take images from the web and use editing software to pixelate the image creating a cross stitch pattern.

Once the pattern was picked it came time to learning how to cross stitch. Growing on previous sewing related projects This project reinforced the skills of threading needles, knotting thread, and starting work. The new skill was mostly in the precision of the stitches. Using grid created by the weave of the Aida cloth fabric we created small x’s for each square of the pattern. There was definitely a learning curve. It was important to make sure that you followed the pattern closely to recreate the same image. Overall this was more challenging for everyone than expected. As time passed the student found it easier to improvise instead of follow the pattern exactly. She did this by creating the outline of the shape she wanted and instead of filling it in drawing in facial features. All that was left to do was to cut the image out into a patch size and iron on interfacing. We did not iron this on to backpacks or clothing, but rather sent her home with instructions to follow with her parents once she got permission to iron this on to whatever her heart desired.

We might not do cross stitch again. It is hard to learn with the time constraints we have, but sewing is definitely something we will continue to revisit.