Learning to Sew Fabric Yo-Yos

I have a dream job doing what I love to do every day. I teach art at an all girls’ high school and I moderate Sewing Club as my extra- curricular activity.  These are two of my favorite things to do!  Last week I had my first club meeting after school.  Several students asked for this club a few years back because they wanted to learn how to sew.

My grandmother taught me to hand sew and crochet at an early age and my mom taught me to machine sew when I was 13. When I was in high school I remember running to the fabric store on the weekends to get fabric to make an outfit I could wear to school on Monday.   I never took home economics in high school because I always took art classes, but my mom was a wonderfully patient teacher and I learned so much from her about sewing and life in general.

I noticed that when I assigned an art project requiring the students to make a few simple stitches, relatively few of the girls even knew how to thread a needle.   Although my wonderful school is very supportive of the arts, there is a strong emphasis on academics, so consequently we do not have a home economics program.  My little club is an attempt to teach the girls a few skills that seem to have fallen by the wayside.

The first club project is crucial, since initial impressions are important in drawing the students back in for the rest of the year.  I searched the internet for beginner sewing ideas and found something that I had done as a teenager and had also done with one of my classes a few years back…fabric yo-yos!They are so much fun to do!  When I was a teenager, I made a vest out of these little puffs of fabric.

I cut a bunch of fabric circles in lots of different patterns and colors and decided to pre-thread the needles to save time and my sanity!  I never know how many students I will have at the first meeting, and I wanted to be ready for them.  I know that in the learning process, it’s better to have the students do the project from the very beginning all by themselves, however, in the interest of time and given their skill level, I made an executive decision and opted to facilitate the project steps.

Although we had a few disasters, they were quickly snipped and restarted relatively quickly.  Most of the girls got the hang of sewing a simple straight stitch and were able to stitch around the circle to the end, gather it, and, with my help, knot the end. 

Then I brought out my fabulous button assortment!  There is just something wonderful that happens when you bring out a box full of buttons and set it in front of an eager bunch of teenage girls.  It’s sort of like kids in a candy store.  They dig, pick out their favorites, and have a hard time choosing just one.  Time was running short, and I knew that some of them would have a difficult time negotiating the button stitching, although some actually did sew the buttons on and did a good job.  The others, however, used the hot glue gun to attach their buttons. 

At 3:15 we were pretty much done, and although the girls wanted to bring their yo-yos home, I asked if I could keep them a week for a display in the showcase outside the art room.  They wholeheartedly agreed and the next morning we had a lovely display of Sewing Club yo-yos! 

Knowing how to create something is a gift, but sharing that gift is a reward in itself!