Ta Da! Here is the 2006 Snowman from Ursula Michael turned into a lovely little flat fold for my niece’s 7th birthday. (I also got her a 100 piece Care Bear Puzzle and a Snoopy T-shirt.)
As with most seven year olds, my niece doesn’t really have room in her bedroom to actually display it, but I came up with (in my opinion) a very inventive solution to this problem. Though you can’t see it in this photo, I attached some cording to the top of the flat fold and made a hanger so that my niece can hang it on the wall as well. The theory is that she can hang it up for now and when she gets a little older and/or has more space she can put it out like the flat fold it is intended to be.
And now, for those of you who are interested in how my little workshop went…
I found out Friday evening that I was going to have six participants that were in 4th and 5th grade. I must admit that I breathed a sigh of relief when I found out that there were only going to be 6 instead of 16 and our session was going to be only 30 minutes instead of the 90 that I had originally thought!
To prepare for Saturday morning, I chose 8 beginner freebie patterns from The Chart Shop and printed them out. I attached a piece of 14 count Aida to each pattern with a needle (provided by the workshop organizers) and sorted out all the floss I would need from my bag of the extra Anchor floss that I don’t use anymore.
When I got to the school gym where the workshop was being held, I set my things out and as the girls entered we just chatted about the things in my stitching bag: My different sized needles, the fobs I had on my different scissors (the one I made and the one Jenna made), my hoops, etc. I asked the girls if anyone had ever tried to stitch and one said she got a kit for Christmas this past year.
I then tried to explain the basics: The first thing we did was find the center of our pattern, choose the right color, and try to thread our needles. At that point I could tell things were going to get away from the plan I had expected to follow because I after I explained the loop method, I spent a good few minutes helping everyone thread their needles.
I had hoped that they would catch on right away and stitch away at their little patterns, but instead we ended up not doing much more than getting the technique of how to make the little “Xs” down before our 30 minutes were up.
The workshop didn’t go exactly as I had planned and if I was going to do it again I would ask another stitcher to help me. However, one girl asked me if I might come to her group sometime and put on a demonstration for her whole club, so I guess I will count it as a successful learning experience… For both me and the girls that I introduced to stitching.
