In 2019 the National Lottery Community Fund gave us the opportunity to invite the children from our village to learn to sew and create in the comfort of our sewing room.
Our intention was to engage 24 children (split into 3 age groups, ie 7-8, 9-10 and 11-13) so that each child (boys and girls) would spend 1.5 hours sewing/textile crafting each Saturday spread over a 10-week period.
We’ve got suitably competent and vetted volunteers lined up to help the children, together with all the insurance, procedures and policies in place, to get the most out of the sessions. All materials and refreshments are provided. The budding fashion designers just need to bring their enthusiasm!
The first session starts with hand sewing but that doesn’t last long as they’re keen to get on the sewing machines. All the time they’re building their skills up from one straight line of stitching to make a cover for their “workbook” to making a pair of pj pants with no stress whatsoever. Hopefully that workbook will be a reminder of how they learnt to sew! They didn’t want it to end.
We started our second sessions in February 2020 but due to COVID-19 we had to postpone the sessions. We are confident that they’ll continue once it’s safe to reopen our sewing room.
This is something that we intend to continue running as the volunteers get as much joy out of it as the children do.
We’ll keep you posted with regards to start up times.
This is a rolling project.