PROJECTS and IMAGES sorted by TECHNIQUES:
Below is a selection of projects that we offer for the K-8 courses or afterschool programs.
1) Weaving: is a wonderful way to stimulate color-pattern-texture awareness. It requires concentration, and counting. The students will weave with beautiful colored yarns, ribbons, and beads. Weaving has been used throughout history and can provide a good historical link to specific periods of time and cultures where the making of fabric was an important craft or art form.
2. Sewing/Embroidery: With the variety of different stitches, techniques, and fabrics, a sewing project can be personalized, embellished, and have a unique individualized look. Historically, sewing is one of the oldest crafts and needlework and embroidery have been important cultural traditions. Sewing is great for practicing fine motor skills and concentration.
3. Felting (wet & needle): Felt is a non-woven cloth that is produced by matting, condensing and pressing woolen fibers. The technique of felting is used to create fabric or to add a design with a felting needle on fabric. It is a meditative working process and requires focus, imagination and decision making. Most children enjoy felting tremendously.
4. Textile Printing: Textile printing originates in East Asia and is the process of applying color, patterns or designs to fabric. The pictures below show a selection of both experimental and controlled printing techniques: tie-die, nature-prints, Suminagashi (Japanese marbling technique), paper-cut/stencil, and blue-print. Printing on fabric has a painterly-decorative aspect and combines imagination and experimentation.
5. Knitting & Crochet: Knitting & Crochet are techniques by which thread or yarn is turned into cloth or fabric. The final product offers children a great sense of accomplishment since they are able to wear or use it in daily life. Knitting & crochet is a repetitive process that involves counting & focus. It has a calming effect, and can add a valuable balance to children’s fast paced life..
6. Exploring Fiber Arts: In the projects below, students explored different methods of combining fiber art materials in an imaginative and playful way.
7. Bracelets: The students learn different knots to make friendship bracelet, and design and weave with beads.
8. Additional Techniques: 3-Dimensional fiber arts related projects include the making of paper-mâché objects, building environments with the pop-up technique, creating dioramas, building a figure with flexible limbs, and learning the basics of decoupage. All these projects require intuitive and conceptual thinking, decision making, and risk taking.
