Crafting at home and for the community

Sewing masks for medical staff (such as over their surgical masks so those could be reused, as there is a shortage). For more information about the medical/CDC situation  and pattern/instructions see:

https://amp.courierpress.com/amp/2865273001

Note: Check with local medical establishments for their needs before you start sewing!

Crafting at home 

Chatting around the crafting table is what some people show up for, but these days you might just be looking for ideas of crafts to do with children at home.

Crafts and games for at-home days:

https://www.sparklestories.com/blog/post/sparkle-crafts-crafts-and-games-for-at-home-days/

10 crafts with descriptions 

http://www.thecityschoolla.org/10-great-waldorf-craft-tutorials/

Making a pocket doll

https://www.themagiconions.com/2016/04/making-a-waldorf-pocket-doll-free-pattern-diy-tutorial-discovering-waldorf-education.html

"Sundays with Sarah" videos:

• Finger knitting
• Four-finger knitting tutorial
• Butter churning with children
• Felted soap
• Wet-on-wet watercolor painting
• Bread baking with children

Waldorf-inspired multiplication learning crafts

http://www.multiculturalmotherhood.com/2017/07/waldorf-inspired-multiplication-crafts.html

The Waldorf Handwork and Craft Curriculum

http://thewonderofchildhood.com/2011/04/the-waldorf-handwork-and-craft-curriculum/

Please share more crafting links in the Comments!

Hearts for community

Ongoing through April 30, 2020

For a couple years we hand-crafted hearts and put them up in our community on Valentine's Day, but this year we will again distribute them (and other items) as our contingent marches in the Northampton Pride Parade on May 1, 2020.

2019: These hundreds of hearts, with The Hartsbrook School paper tags attached, were warmly received by parade audience. Thank you all who helped make them and the rainbow finger-knitted garlands!

2018 hearts still on tree outside sanctuary church in Amherst 

Because making the hearts is heartwarming in the middle of winter, and heart-shaped things appear in January everywhere we look commercially, we are making them now and will continue to make them until May. Hearts made of wax, wood, jute, wire, beads, etc. as well as yarn, felt and fabric... anything that is relatively sturdy for storage and handing out would be wonderful.

If you can donate fabric, felt, yarn, wool roving for felting, or other natural materials for making hearts, please leave in the box in the Hartsbrook Hall foyer. If you need materials to make hearts, please help yourself from this box! There are some paper patterns for shapes.

Feel free to make hearts at home and place in the basket by the main office anytime on or before May 1, 2020.

For reference: Hartsbrook heartburst

Waldorf dolls

Louise Spear, long-time Hartsbrook handwork teacher, will be giving a 3-session workshop on making Waldorf dolls, which is also taught in middle-school handwork classes.

When: Thursdays 8:30-10:30am February 13, 27, and March 5, 11Where: Hartsbrook Handwork room
Cost: Lessons are free to the community, materials and supplies estimated $15-20

RSVP BY WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 29, 2020 to join group order for doll fabric and stuffing materials. You may respond after that date and still participate in doll making if you have your own materials.

Registration form

Materials:
= Special doll fabric (group order to save on shipping, specify color)
= Stuffing and tubular gauze (group order for bulk stuffing)

Supplies to bring: Needles, thread, embroidery floss, hair (yarn)

In the first session we will create the inner head and torso and add the skin fabric to the head and sew this down, as well as do facial features if we have time. The last step could be done at home once everyone has an idea of what to do.

In the second session, we can create patterns and cut out the body and arm pieces. These then need to be sewn before we can stuff and attach to the body.

As most of the crafters can probably crochet, starting a wig for the doll can happen anytime after we have made the heads. I have always sewn on hair at the end but it could be done earlier by careful adults.

In the third session, we would stuff the body pieces and sew them all together. Fast workers could also work on hair or clothing but these last two items could be done at home.

Want to sew clothes?

Sounds like we have some interest in a sewing workshop, maybe a weekend, BYOSM (sewing machine). Stay tuned!

https://www.vogue.com/article/sustainability-2020s-circular-fashion-textile-recycling

See also 

https://www.fibershed.com/

Felted wool slippers

December 5 & 12, 2019 

8:30-10:45am

Handwork Room

Experienced felt artist Karen Lavalee-Tente will lead this workshop to make felted wool slippers over two weeks. 

RSVP is needed for planning and preparation, including support for gathering materials and equipment. The workshop is free.

Please reserve your space here: https://forms.gle/Hu5CxGeKhVcJqBUq8

RSVP by Friday 11/22/19

To bring:

Your feet for tracing (or a tracing of the feet the slipper is for)

Dishpan

Dish soap 

Towels - many (one a large bath towel)

Plastic bag

Tulle, if you have some (or sheer old curtain; square yard)

To buy:

Wool roving/batt (210-290g total: divided between 2 colors for inside/outside. Try soft merino wool for inside color and wool batt for the outside). 

We will organize a group order and/or field trip to Woolology in Deerfield. 

https://m.facebook.com/woolology/

Welcome 2019-20

Welcome all crafters--those who want to learn, those with lots of expertise, those with large mending piles, those who want to knit because it is in their children's curriculum...

No experience required to participate in Hartsbrook Community Crafting: an opportunity to get together with other members of the Hartsbrook community and do handwork. Sometimes we all are learning a new craft, sometimes everyone is working on a different personal project, and sometimes we all work together to make something.

Join us Thursday, September 5, 2019 to finish a yo-yo quilt we started in the Spring to raffle at the Farm2Table event on September 21st. Most likely we will be set up under the canopy outside the main entrance of the green Hartsbrook Hall building, and newcomers are welcome to join in after the orientation program. We will also be selling raffle tickets for the quilt! $5.

Community Crafting gathers on Thursday mornings from 8:30-10:30am in the handwork room, upstairs in Hartsbrook Hall.

Yo-yo quilt 2019

This year we decided to make a yo-yo quilt as our group project for a fundraiser. We learned how to make the fabric yo-yos during Thursday morning community crafting sessions, and then a few nimble-fingered parents and grandparents hand-stitched hundreds of them at home or on the go. (You can carry them with you and make them when you have a few free minutes!) Karen has gathered all the yo-yo squares that everyone made, she and Kelly laid them out in a pleasing pattern, and Karen and her mother will sew them into a quilt, ready for the raffle drawing in September! Tickets are available now.

We will be raffling off this quilt in September to benefit Hartsbrook!

The story of fabric yo-yos

The ruched fabric rosette known as a yo-yo in North America and a Suffolk Puff in the British Isles and elsewhere is a curious little thing.

A yo-yo is produced by forming a fold on the edge of a fabric circle with a running stitch, and then pulling the thread to form a gathered round. It can then be combined with others to produce an “open-weave” quilt top, or used singly as an embellishment for three-dimensional appliqué.

It is one of those novelty techniques that’although closely associated with quilts—does not of itself produce a true quilt. Many yo-yo “quilts” have no batting or backing, and are more like coverlets or throws. Even those that are attached to a backing are usually tied rather than quilted. Nevertheless, quilters love yo-yos.

Most commonly associated with the 1930s and ‘40s, yo-yo quilts of that era frequently mimic hexagon mosaic patterns popular at the time [see our granny hexagon blanket project 2018], such as Grandmother’s Flower Garden. Yo-yos were also used to create remarkable pictorial quilts, such as Texas Under Six Flags created by Leila Chaney in 1936 (pictured), which features over 10,000 silk yo-yos of varying sizes.

(continues, click link to see full article)  

The Yo-Yo quilt was a popular style of quilt making in America from the 1920-40s. Yo-Yos, or tiny circles of fabric, were gathered up at the edges and sewn together to create a three-dimensional effect. Yo-Yo quilts were popular because women could carry the little circles of fabric with them and make Yo-Yos whenever they had a free moment. Another way to explain the popularity of the Yo-Yo quilt may be its association with the toy called the Yo-Yo, very popular in the 1930-40s. There are many theories or ideas about how long the Yo-Yo has been in existence. But we know that a wooden toy with a string looped around the center axis was developed in the Philippines over 100 years ago. Some people believe that the Yo-Yo comes from the Filipino word for “come-come” or “return”. In the 1920s a man named Pedro Flores brought a Filipino Yo-Yo to the United States. A businessman named Donald Duncan bought the Filipino Yo-Yo Company around 1928. In 1932 Mr. Duncan received a trademark for the word Yo-Yo.
Source: https://museums.alaska.gov/QuiltExhibit/quiltspdf/YoYo.pdf

"Yo-yo quilts were popular in the 1930s and 1940s, and we see lots of lovely examples sewn with fabrics from those eras. Some were structured, with the rosettes arranged to form a pattern, but many of the examples are scrap quilts."
 - The Spruce Crafts blog

Internet resources:
https://www.thesprucecrafts.com/how-to-make-a-yo-yo-quilt-2821444
https://www.guidepatterns.com/how-to-make-a-yo-yo-quilt-super-cool-instructions.php
https://www.quilts.com/sfancy/suzy-s-fancy-the-story-of-fabric-yo-yos.html
A Pinterest board of yo-yo quilts: https://www.pinterest.com/purplebug61/yo-yo-quilt/?lp=true


Basic instructions with our real quilt start.