Themed beanbags for a school quiet corner.
Today's exciting sewing job: beanbags for a primary school quiet corner, 12 of them. The brief was 12 beanbags of 100 litres.
My wish is to create something exciting and different, and this time the aim is to sew chairs of good thoughts. Thoroughly positive and cheerful, with a small instructive twist.
Something that would not simply be a bag in the corner but would stir a lot of happy feelings in the children and give them an important message as well.
I asked the school for positive words that matter to children, and the teachers put together a short list of words with the children. I divided the words sent to me into pairs and thought up one figurative character for each pair of words. That turned out to be an animal, a bird or an insect that would, to my mind, best carry the essence of that pair of words.
Since there were a few pairs of words short, one chair has no design yet. And one chair, the very first one finished, I made a reflector chair in the spirit of this autumn's weather, named "BE SEEN".
12 chairs, 12 pairs of words, 12 chairs carrying different messages.
A wise and sharp owl, a busy and diligent bee, a nimble and sporty monkey, a lovely and splendid ladybird, a clean and careful cat, a good and friendly dog, a precise and painstaking spider (that is a spider's web, because the children become the spider themselves), a joyful and kind sun, a beautiful and good sunflower, and thank you and please, health and dear one, and be seen.
As material I am using upholstery fabric, which is strong enough and more child friendly than thermantine. To thinner materials I attach a second fabric underneath. Any fabric that frays at all I overlock. The seams I quilt over. The filling is the granules used in beanbags. The fastening is a double zip.
By today I have made designs for all the chairs, got hold of the fabrics, the filling and threads in the right colours;
all the pieces of the bags are cut out, overlocked and have their zips on. The coloured fabrics needed for the pictures have been gathered and are waiting in a pile, and non fraying materials have been chosen for the text. Next I carry on sewing the little characters onto the outer fabric, cutting the letters for the pairs of words and quilting them onto the bags, and then sewing the pieces together and filling the finished bags.
More than a week of work is behind me and there is no end in sight yet.
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Today went on cutting letters: 24 words, that is 125 sun yellow letters of wool felt. Half of them I managed to sew onto the chairs as well; the other half were left waiting sadly for their turn. I also finished the owl seat today; the temptation to push the letters and other scraps of fabric aside for a while was so great.
What is the point of these words? I very much hope that these good, beautiful words pass positive feelings on to the children. It is always pleasant to hear and to see good words. And since these chairs are going into the quiet corner, I think it is lovely if, after a demanding lesson, the children are surrounded by something very positive.
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Another week has gone by and the bags have their words on them, their faces on the front and are almost entirely sewn. Tomorrow the bases still have to be sewn on and the granules shovelled in. Stuffing the granules into the bag is quite entertaining. They are tiny and almost weightless little beads, statically "charged" inside their plastic bag. When I take them in a scoop and try to pour them into the opening of the bag, a good part of every pour flies onto my hands, my clothes, my hair and the furniture around me. A little of it does manage to get into the bag. That is how filling the first bag went. Now there are 11 bags left and more than 1000 litres of the stuff to shovel. We shall see how that goes.
I really do hope that the children will have fun and feel good with them, and that the cheerful characters add energy and optimism to the school day.
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And they are finished.
The last job, filling the bags with granules, we did together with Mathias (2 years old). Seventy plus scoops into each bag, and we counted out loud together. He had his own little scoop and very carefully sprinkled exactly the right amount of "beads" into each bag, a couple of granules at a time. Before his afternoon nap we filled 7 bags and in the evening the rest.
Before filling the bags I showed Mathias the pictures on the chairs one at a time and asked whether he liked this one. No. And do you like this one? No. And so through all the chairs. Only about the sun did he say that he liked it :-). That is an ant 🙂 Once the bags had been shovelled full of granules, he rolled about on top of them and decided that he liked these chairs now. 🙂
On Saturday we took the bags to the school quiet corner and I took a few pictures there as a keepsake.
Thanks also to the school cook, who opened the door for us and waited while we did it. She was worried, of course, that they would not last long. I do hope they came out hard wearing: double fabrics, multiple seams, two zips. I believe you can quite happily jump on them and pull them about by their ears. Only the sun's rays are too fragile to be tugged. But the seams certainly will not give way any time soon.
Here is one picture of the school quiet room. The rest of the pictures of the finished work go on the page "Portfolio, beanbags"
Since then I have had an order on a similar theme for beanbags for the youngest groups at a nursery. Exciting ideas are already crowding in. 🙂
Since I also have, among other things, a teaching education and work experience, subjects like this are especially close to my heart.
Before that, though, kannel bags and one small drum bag are waiting their turn.
