Sewing on Hessian (Burlap)

Its been rather cold here in Melbourne (being the middle of winter), so I thought what a great opportunity to spend some creative time on those winter favourites; knitting, weaving and sewing.

Hessian sewing & gluing (7 year old)

This week we spent the lesson creating lovely sewing on hessian (burlap for those of you in the US).  This lovely idea was inspired by this pin.  Thank you Imagine Explore Create!  Since I have children as young as 5 years old, I also provided glue so some items could be stuck on.  I also used iron on hemming tape to stick on some of the larger pieces of material / felt.  I suggested a nature or jungle theme for these yet I always have children who want to do something different and I don't want to stop their creativity so I usually end up with some a bit different to the others.  Or sometimes one child goes in a certain direction and others follow and that's fine too (I always show all of children's work on my blog so you can see the variation in results).  At the end of the lesson we did some finger knitting and weaving which I will talk about in a later post.

Hessian Sewing and gluing (7 year old)

Hessian Sewing and gluing (7 year old)

What you need:

• Hessian (I just used some hessian sacks from Bunnings cut into squares)
• Bias tape for edges (optional)
• Felt in various colours
• Buttons
• Wool
• Plastic needles
• Scraps of material
• Feathers, pom poms and anything else you can think of to add
• Glue (I used weldbond, yet any fabric or PVA would be fine)
• Hemming tape (optional)
• Scissors
• Black Markers

How to:

• I was lucky to have a friend who donated the bias tape (thank you Julia) and a friend who offered to sew the bias tape around the edges of these for me (thank you Ali).
• Once I had passed out the hessian squares to the children I explained some basic sewing techniques and how they could use the various materials.
• Then just let the children get to it and use their creativity.  
• I walked around the room tying knots, threading needles and demonstrating stitches as we went.
• I also had the iron set up and ironed on large pieces for them using the hemming tape
• I tried to get most of them to sew something onto their hessian square (stitches or some buttons)

The Results:

Hessian Sewing (5 years to 12 years)

If you are wondering what to do with your hessian sewing.  I framed my childrens (they matched as they were both button trees) in IKEA frames.  You could also add some string and hang it on a stick.

I thought this was a great opportunity to talk about yarn art (including knitting, tapestry, weaving and crochet) which is very different to other art we have looked at so far.  Often we think of art as paintings and drawings yet there is so much more to art and people can express their creativity in so many ways.  We talked about "yarn bombing" and how it has become really popular as a form of beautiful, colourful, yet removable graffiti.   Our artist of the week was Magda Sayeg who has been attributed to starting the movement of yarn bombing. Below is a lovely example of yarn bombing.

Cheers Fiona