Workshop 2: Tie-Dye Wall Hangings & Sketchbook Wrap-up

I was an observer for last week’s workshop and Caley was the instructor. Therefore, I felt much more relaxed from the very beginning. 

 

I think community time was a lot easier this week. Maybe it’s just because we were all at least passingly familiar with everyone else. I also feel that it was more relaxed because there was less to do during community time. The students were immediately involved in button making when they entered the room. Since there were not any get to know you introductions, pitches, ot voting, I felt like everyone was much more able to chat and work on the activity confident in what was going to come next.

I tried my hand, again, at getting a very quiet student in my group to open up. I feel I was slightly more successful this time. (We talked about books and her siblings.) I don’t think I imagined that this student was a little more animated during last week’s workshop.

I feel Caley did a great job with her teaching time. Her lesson involved using art to transform your space. So the students made tie-dye wall hangings. 

Her introductory activity tied in very well. The students “tie-dyed” using sharpies and rubbing alcohol on fabric. Something I had never done before. It was pretty fun. 

Caley also talked a bit about the symbolic meaning of color and different theories about how color may affect people’s emotions and perceptions. She encouraged the students to be purposeful in their color choices for their tie-dye project in order to evoke certain feelings or meaning.

Toward the end, while the students’ tie-dye hangings were soaking, I had a chance to help the students construct the sketchbooks that we had started during my lesson the week before.

I didn’t think I needed to go over in detail instructions for measuring and sewing. Partly because I thought verbally explaining some things would be enough, and for the other things, I thought I would be able to move around and help students as the next part came, or as they needed more help.

This was not well thought out on my part. I learned that, first of all, measuring and making straight lines is not a given skill for older students. My verbal instructions were something like “measure where the center line of your cover is and draw a line down. This will be your spine.” At least one student did not measure the center correctly, and one other had made a line that was slightly askew. Of course, this resulted in an uneven front and back when the cover and paper were folded in half. 

Measuring:

Drilling holes with awl:

Even for the girls that did measure correctly, there was some natural unevenness as the pages wouldn’t line up exactly (it happened for me, too). I explained that this was normal and that I had taken small batches of pages (10 or less) and had cut them until they were even a little at a time.

The students wanted to make their book even ALL AT ONCE however and unfortunately for them no scissors or cutting blade was quite sharp enough to hack that much paper at once. I do believe, though, that everyone was satisfied with their book by the end.

There were some minor problems with sewing as well. This mostly revolved around not following the instruction to leave a tail when they began sewing the spine. Those issues were resolved with a hot glue gun.

I meant the wrapping up of the sketchbook to be a filler time for Caley, but because I underestimated how long it would take the girls to finish their book, it took more time than I expected.

If I could do things differently, I would have saved that wrap up activity for one of my lessons with leftover time.

Overall, I think the workshop went very well and Caley did a great job. I’m excited to see what next week brings.